


We'll All Fall Down

by castielslovesong



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (at some point), Angst, Angst and Feels, Attempt at Humor, BAMF Tony Stark, Feels, Fluff, Hurt Everyone, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sad and Happy, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 06:29:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 22,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14538693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castielslovesong/pseuds/castielslovesong
Summary: Set post Infinity War, Tony Stark may be the outward definition of confidence but he's dwindled in recent years. Been humbled. And stumbled pretty hard.Faced with what is now their reality, Tony races against his demons and his team to fix this. To fix them. He'll do it alone, because he was never much of a team player anyway.He'll have to be quick though, because time is everything. And nothing.





	1. Rise From Their Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> *Slides into my old account to post a Marvel fic for the first time*
> 
> Hi, I'm emotionally compromised and I needed to write something so here we are. Will be Steve/Tony eventually and the ratings might change. We're going to be following Tony for pretty much this whole thing but I might throw in some Steve POV at some point. Idk, it's been a while and I'm rusty. 
> 
> Please be gentle. 
> 
> Any comments would be greatly appreciated frens :)

Part of him was still processing what had just happened. Peter was crying and hugging him, _apologising_ and that in itself had been too much to handle. Then he was peeling, disintegrating, _leaving_. He was just a kid. Tony would give anything to take his place. He’d been so busy comprehending that Peter was just ash on his sleeves and under his fingernails from where he’d been gripping him so tightly, that when everyone else started to similarly combust, he was consumed by a numbness rather than grief.

_Did we just lose?_

_It was the only way_.

His mistakes were greater than all the lives that were being lost. He wasn’t strong enough or smart enough to snark or fight his way out of this one. And all that he’s left with is an empty planet filled with his empty thoughts. He wants to scream. He wants to collect what’s left of them into flasks and jars and fix this. But he can’t… He can’t. This is absolute. That much he knows for sure. He can feel it in the hollow of his lung and the marrow of his bones.

In the midst of his breakdown, he shivers. Not because it’s cold, no, the planet is actually pretty hospitable and lucky him, because he hadn’t really prepared the nanotech to deal with lack of oxygen or unknown variables of this kind. He shivers because Thanos, destroyer of worlds and genocidal maniac, knew him. By name. Tony Stark. This Titan, warlord, bigot, respected Tony Stark.

Why wouldn’t he? Tony has revolutionised the tech industry as the world currently knew it. He’d heard the rumours of Wakanda, they were hard to miss, and he had no doubt that a civilisation allowed to exist and thrive without outer world influences could no doubt put him to shame. But he was one man. A brilliant brain that has been moulded and shaped and beaten. God was his brain tired. The insomnia and anguish and anger that had got him to this point would surly have driven any normal person insane.

Not Tony, though, he grew with it, encouraged it, taunted his exhausted brain especially when he was exhausted because he had to be better. Improve, adapt and change; his tech and his brain have been his only constants throughout his entire life. His only thank you to his Dad was for the opportunities his less than desirable parenting and company that he’d been left with.

Bear with him a second because, holy shit, he should absolutely not be identifying with the giant purple testicle.

Tony was scared because he saw himself in Thanos too. Tony was just about on the same path with Ultron. He thought he knew better, could provide a safe world for everyone because what’s better than a self-learning AI than a whole army of them? He was wrong. He was wrong quite often.

The pact with the American government, the fight with Steve.

God.

His Dad would hate him for how he’s treated Captain America and half his team. His friends. People who he let get too close, and his paranoid little brain shooed them away to the point where he didn’t even recognise his actions from logic or fear.

He didn’t let himself think about who hasn’t made it. The 50% of the world that is gone, selfishly, means nothing to the amends he may never get to make. He needs to apologise to them all. To sit down and watch a film with them again. To invite Peter over to try new tech. Sit in the lab with Bruce. Hack the playlist on Natasha’s Spotify. Go to the gym with Steve.

So, yes. If anyone knows the sacrifice, the misjudgement, miscalculations that Thanos has made it’s assuredly him. The sacrifices. The arrogance. He swallows thickly, wiping his hands down his pants that are still half covered in armour. Sighing, he closes his eyes.

The problem is, he is starting to think Thanos wasn’t wrong. Not about the mass genocide of course, morally, personally and legally Tony knows that thinking anyone has the right to make that choice is ridiculous. However, as Thanos had said, they are both cursed with knowledge.

Cursed.

Tony snorts to himself. That’s a pretty light way to put it.

At the end of the day though, now that Tony is alone (except for the blue iRobot, who hasn’t said a word to him yet, and has an air of indifference to their defeat) he can only feel resentment for who he is.

How many people does he have to lose, only to see himself come out ok the other side? Why is it always him who wakes up to nothing but grievance; finding out that once again he is truly alone. He’s supposed to be a genius. People needed to stop putting him on such a high pedestal because he did not deserve any of it.

He leans forward, pitching at the ache in his face and chest and practically in every nerve of his body. He wonders how long he’s been sitting there, surrounded by the ashes of the boy he wished he’d never gotten involved with. Glancing over, he sees the girl kicking around at the dust of the planet. Just casually shuffling what’s probably Stardick or Strange or Blue Hulk… For all her composure she looks just as lost as Tony feels.

His hand involuntarily fists his shirt where the remaining chassis for his nanobots crumbles beneath his palms. There’s blood everywhere, but the cauterisation of his side is holding up well enough. He frowns.

Fucking wizard.

That balloon-headed moron and his damn omnipresent cape promised him that if it came to saving half the entire universe – he has never had actual stakes that high, not in all the battles he’s fought – that he’d let them die. Protect the stone. That’s all they had to do and they were so close. What the hell does Strange think he’s doing gambling Tony, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, against _half the fucking universe_.

He feels the vomit rise before he leans unceremoniously to the side to spew his fancy breakfast with Pepper next to him. Pepper. Poor sweet Pepper who always seemed to be clinging to the idea that Tony could be normal. That he could be a superhero and a husband. She was just as delusional as he is. Idly, he wonders if she’s alive. The nausea creeps back up on him, shortly followed by a cold and overwhelming anger.

How _dare_ he. Tony, if he’s being truly honest with himself and he rarely is, was done. He gave Thanos all he had; all his little tricks, his advancements, let him use his head like a punching bag. When Thanos turned that knife against him and Tony felt the sickening crunch of it scraping across bone, that intense heat as his blood began to seep from him, coughed as the punctured lung started taking liquid, he was ready to die.

He always knew this was a one-way trip for him. Even though he was engaged to be married, despite the fact that the world was far from fixed and alien threats seemed to be the new norm. He could have cried in gratitude for him to go out fighting for something meaningful.

And Strange went and bargained his pathetic life for the stone which would end it all.

14 million possibilities, faster than Jarvis could run them if he wasn’t a conscious red being now, and this is how things had to go down. Fuck that. Fuck this. Fuck _him_. Tony was going to goddamn figure out how to fix this mess just so that he can punch that god-awful wizard in the face himself.

Since Howard died, and Obidiah royally screwed him over, Tony made the conscious choice to only let himself be the master of his own destiny. Harry Potter can shove his little underhand move right back down his own snarky throat.

Tony was still crying. But that had to stop now.

_Tears don’t fix things Tony. You can throw yourself the best damn pity party but not here, not in front of me. You be a man and own up to your mistakes and you fix them. You’re a Stark. We don’t let people remember our failures with useless little tears._

For the second time in his life, Dad was right.

Sniffing, Tony staggered to his feet. His sudden motion surprised his only companion, who raised what was presumably an eyebrow at him in question.

He wiped his sleeve across his face, likely only making it dirtier.

“Right, you,” He paused, because he didn’t really remember her name, “Interstellar, or whatever,” she was glaring at him but he was too drained to care. “How’d you get here, by ship? You have a ship?”

She nodded, still regarding him with an unearthly comprehension mixed with robotic dismissal.

“Good, that’s great. We should, um.” He took a moment to breathe; for all the panic and self-hatred that was swirling in his system, he was an engineer. And engineers fixed things. “Earth. We need to go to Earth.”

“Why? There will be nothing but more dust waiting for you there.”

She looked away, her expression pained for a moment.

“Because, asshat, whether I like it or not I’m the one who has got to fix this mess. And you, well, you have a ship.” He was already stumbling towards her, doing his best not to look back to what was left of Peter, to his pile of vomit, to the dirt encrusted with his blood and tears.

“You think you, _you_?!” Laughing incredulously, her glare hardened and she pushed him roughly on the shoulder, “You cannot believe that you can undo what has been done. I saw you fight. There’s nothing left in you.”

He couldn’t listen to her. The ocean of his insecurities were already screaming the same thing in his ears. He has proved time and time again that he isn’t enough. There’s never enough of his brilliance or his madness to give. He’d love to wallow in that feeling, to give up and shut his brain off – to die and finally be at peace with the war in his brain. Nothing he has done has ever been the right thing to do. He doesn’t have the conscience of Captain America or the wisdom of Thor. But Strange gave up the stone for a reason. A reason greater than his own understanding, and he’ll have to start by making sure that the good doctor didn’t absolutely colossally fuck up.

“Listen do you want another chance to stab that giant dickbag or not? Because I’d really like to see him get stabbed a couple hundred times.”

It was malicious and he knew it. It was more ruthless than he thought himself capable. He found that he didn’t care. He didn’t give a flying fuck what monster he had to become to take Thanos on. He’d find him and make things right. As right as he could, anyway.

The gears inside his brain were already turning, the time stone had to be the key. Thanos must be able to be summoned or tracked. An energy signature had to be left behind. Something. He just had to find it.

He had zoned out. Quite spectacularly. The girl was regarding him with careful guarded eyes, her own cogs physically humming and whirring.

“I’ll take you to Earth.”

That was that.

He’s not sure how long it will take but at this point is afraid to ask. Nebula, she’d offered over a glance of her shoulder before stalking off away from the battlefields, was her name. Her company has been amiable at best; he doesn’t particularly want to turn this into an episode from a cheap TV show where he’s constantly saying ‘are we there yet?’

So, he settles himself into her ship, resigning to remain quiet, not taking much of it in. The technology should be fascinating, the stabilisers and controls, the brightly lit panels and obvious signs of damage and bodged circuitry. On a normal day, Tony would be sticking his head inside every little compartment.

Today?

Today, he clips himself into one of the seats. The ship rattles and Titan moves further and further away.

Today he closes his eyes and prays that he can figure this out.


	2. Spaced Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting back to Earth and getting his brain back in gear. Easy-peasy right?

Let it be known that Tony Stark is no coward.

There are a number of things he is – alcoholic, paranoid, self-centred – but coward is not something anyone can use to describe him. It had hurt, more than he’d like to admit to anyone, when Steve Rogers, _the_ Captain America, had called him out and said that when it came down to it, he wouldn’t lay down on the wire for the sake of others. As though Tony could be _that_ self-centred. Sure, he’s not a soldier. He can’t imagine being a part of a battalion, a comrade, going into a war unequivocally knowing that you and your friends may not be coming home. Entering a war, with that in mind, must be a harrowing experience for a coward.

However, he’s fought in battles, threw himself in front of targets to save others. Became a superhero. Hell, he even took the hardest pitch when Thanos threw a moon at him for fucksake. How much closer to the line does he have to be? He and Steve disagreed on a lot of things. Tony’s attitude, his lack of teamwork, his tendency to do something without going through the chain of command. Whether it was the journey on what had been a pleasant day of blissful ignorance, or the whole moon thing, or surviving the apocalypse entirely… He’s long past caring what other people think of him; anything else he can make up for in quick wit.

He’s not a coward.

It’s a phrase he’s been saying to himself since they started passing planets he could recognise. If they were on Titan, the biggest of Saturn’s moons, then they’ve just passed Jupiter. Being this close to these planets makes Tony feel a little bit giddy. Almost as though a piece of his childhood has awakened at being in space, outer space, in what is technically an alien spaceship – just like an astronaut. That could be the dehydration, or the blood loss giving him the impression that he’s completely out of it. He flexes his fingers, distracted. At this speed Nebula is going to get him home in no time. He’s not exactly sure he’s ready for that.

“Where am I to leave you?”

Her voice startles him out of his introspection. The fact that she has bothered to ask him a preference mystifies him a second longer.

“I… Honestly, I have no idea.” He manages, suddenly realising that going to Earth means dealing with the fallout. He’s starting to wish that he’d been left with no other option on that dust planet.

“We both know you could have contacted your team at any time. I sat you at the communications panel, but I suspected you would not do it.”

His eyes narrow at her. The chair she’s sitting in hasn’t moved, he can just see the crown of her head, the way she coolly controls the ship. Of course, in between blacking out and being stuck in this ship, he had fiddled with some of the buttons and screens in front of him. At any point, he could have called. He couldn’t bring himself to dial the number. It felt like too much, too many emotions to be conveying across a line.

Poking around Fury’s files back in the day lead him to all sorts of interesting information, including that of Peter Quill. He was drunk at the time though, and the memory flitters back to him on a passing whim. Guardians, there were five of them. He’d not seen antenna girl, or Nebula, so maybe Quill was expanding his band.

 “What about you C-3PNO,” He deflects, looking away from the illuminated screen, “That can’t have been all of your people, Guardians of the Galaxy… Sounds like a tacky band name.”

“I’m not part of their ‘team’,” She even air quotes, which would have been hilarious if the pit of Tony’s stomach hadn’t just dropped out, “I don’t have anyone.”

The irony in that fact. Sure, he had people who would be willing to set aside their past grievances and perhaps even act happy to see him alive; kidding himself that they would be truly glad to see him was a fallacy he wouldn’t allow himself. No, he needs to focus on figuring out where Thanos is, and how exactly he’s going to pry that glove from his fingers. There’s also a migraine and broken bones to sort out along the way.

“They’re good people. I’m sure they’d welcome you. Plus, if you didn’t care about any of your people, you wouldn’t be taking me in the first place.”

He shouldn’t really be pushing her, one of these shiny buttons is probably to ‘evacuate your nearest nuisance’. Absently, he wonders how fast they must be flying, and the fact that there is no air resistance or disturbance inside the ship; the pressure and physics of space continue to overwhelm him. Mars. He’s Tony Stark and his inflight experience is watching actual planets roll past his window.

Not that any of it matters now.

“My sister was the only reason any of them even tolerated me. And now she’s dead. Figure out where you want to be dropped or I’ll dump you whenever we enter the atmosphere.”

For once, he was fresh out of shrewd comments.

 

He pulls the screen back towards him. There was a massive amount of data that he could review, ship stats and logs, current temperature and planetary units. He yawns and wipes at his eyes with his free hand. He can do this, he has to be able to do this.

“You knew Thanos?” Tony asks her, having already looked on the database linked to the ship. Nothing was coming up about Thanos or the stones that he either didn’t already know or had gleaned from his own niche experience.

Nebula was silent, to the point where Tony was starting to worry about her being unconscious in the driver’s seat.

“Thanos stole me when I was young. I was his weapon, nothing more. I only wish to have killed him sooner. I tried and was captured. That was when I went to Titan. I followed him, do you know that failure for an assassin makes you the most pointless being in the universe? I do. He made sure I would never forget.” Clouded by her hatred, she flexes her arm. Tony sees the sinews of metal and cords.

“Wow I wasn’t expecting it to be some fucked up episode of Jerry Springer, but here we are,” He gets out of his chair, wobbling on his first steps because if he thought he was in excruciating pain immediately after the fight, everything had settled into bone deep ache at this point. His vision was blacking in and out, not that Nebula noticed, and he leaned on the chair for a minute to collect himself again. “Are you injured, your robot self? Is it damaged?”

She chuckled darkly, “I’ve survived worse.”

“Ok, you’re a total badass and I get it but me, _me_ , electronics and building is kind of my gig. I know there’re plenty of parts on this ship. So, is there a way I can help you?”

She flips a few switches on the board before her; gets out of her seat to face him. Her glare is like knives, and he’s had enough of those for a long while. Turning, he holds his bloody hands up in surrender.

“Sorry I as-“

“Why?”

“Excuse me?” He turns to her, her expression is still guarded but he can see it now, the damage he hadn’t before. The limp to her leg, the splintered chunk on her stomach.

“Why are you offering that, when you are yourself in disrepair. I haven’t got much experience with humans, and though Quill had his reasons to hate me…”

“I’ll level with you, I get antsy. I need to fix something and I kind of like the idea of you finishing Thanos off without half your robo-guts hanging out.”

“I see.”

He takes a set of pliers from the bench beside him.

“Your arm first, shall we?”

He tinkers with the mechanics with a detached precision. Despite the intricacy of his current work his mind continues to wander across his next move here.

Should he go back to the Avengers, to _Steve_? it shouldn’t hurt as much as it does to think about him, but it does.

That flip phone has been in his pocket for the better part of two years now and, like his coffee, every morning and every night he flicks across Steve’s number. It is a lot of wasted time, virtually too much for his perfectionist brain to handle.

If Pepper is alive, he needs to break it off with her. He chokes on the thought. They’d both fought so hard to be together, and realistically if he can’t make it work with Pepper he is going to die alone. No one else would put up with his eccentricates, his nightmares nor his inclination to find trouble. His anxieties have been eating at him for a long time now, like an angry swarm of bees all stinging him at once. Pumping their venom deeper into his veins. He’d rushed to give her the engagement ring, messed up the execution of what could have been a deeply happy moment in his life. He is consumed by his regrets, too young to have so many, too old to deal with most of them.

Pepper deserves to be happy. And dealing with Tony’s shit? Thinking that the next fight could be his last, not knowing whether he’ll be diving into an interdimensional wormhole or boarding a massive alien ship and disappearing just when the world needed him most… It’s a life best lead solitary. Solitary is an old friend to Tony, at least.

He also needs to deal with Friday. She is inferior to Jarvis – he may well just be bitter that he had become attached to Jarvis. He shouldn’t be able to build a bad AI, but he did. Friday wasn’t as quick, as friendly. She’s self-learning, in the same way that Jarvis was, but she lacks the warmth and personality Jarvis had. Damnit, he doesn’t want to start crying again. He wants his friends back. That’s too much to ask, he knows, most people leave him through a fault all his own. A flaw in his code that can’t be rewritten.

“I need to make a stop,” He says, wiping his hands of the grease and blood, the grazes still sluggishly bleeding, “Then I know where I need you to take me.”

Flexing her appendages, testing their ability, and no doubt assessing his own merit she nods to him.

“We’ll reach Earth soon.”

 

For some unknown reason, he was in the mindset that breaching Earth’s atmosphere, coming _home_ , would feel better than it did. That it wouldn't look so different, that he wouldn't be able to sense the change. The weight of billions being removed from the surface, like a physical sensation shouldn't be evident. Coming closer, it’s not just the same vestiges of rock and water that he’d left. Everything was _white_. Anyone else would be grateful, glad to be on their own turf. He felt the crushing force of gravity, those 3.5 billion lives pressing against his skull.

He takes a deep breath of Earth’s air. It’s familiar and different all at once. It’s cleaner than on Titan, with hints of Nitrogen and smog. There’s something new too, heavy and bitter on his tongue. _Ash_ his brain helpfully supplies. He ignores it, the niggling idea that everything is so very wrong and tells himself once again that he is Iron Man. All he needs to do is to get what he needs. Deep breaths and baby steps.

Nebula waits while he gathers his things. It’s like a dream or a movie, the streets vacant and stores closed. He tries to be careful with his steps but inwardly he cringes, he's walking on what's left of people. It's enough to make him want to gag. The screens are not filled with adverts but an immediate press release from the White House. The whole city is much more desolate than he remembers. Bleak. Sad.

The building is empty and Pepper isn't there. He sighs, nervous, she might have gone home. That sounded reasonable enough to Tony's overworked brain. A ghost town: that's what he’s been dropped into and despite being used to the feeling, he’s never truly been encompassed by loneliness like this. He picks up Dummy, a couple of tablets and laptops. The schematics for the nanotech along with some of his prototypes for the next stage, which he dumps into a box too. Dragging the best of his tools, in the first toolbox he’d ever owned (he can be sentimental, people just assume the worst in him) he manages to get all his equipment back to the ship.

Nebula takes off again while he directs her to a location that he’s never revealed to anyone. His own personal cave; a getaway; a sanctuary. His panic room.

She lands in the deserted area he’ll now call home, unknown to her is that she's practically standing on top of his building. He'd utilized some of the helicarrier tech, the reflective panels and such - not that Nebula needed to know that. Her eyes scan their surroundings, calculated and unconvinced. As quick as his failing body will let him, he gets his equipment off her ship. He’s sweating profusely by the end, breathing hard because he’s working with a lung and a bit.

“I guess this is goodbye then, thanks for being my latest designated driver,” He smiles blasé, an attempt at being confident again in spite of the _fuckfuckfuckshitfuck_ that’s running on a loop in his ears.

“You should talk to them,” Stoic, she nods and returns to the ship.

“Right back at you sweetheart!” The doors close as he shouts it back to her, “You know where to find me.”

Revolving on his heel, with a box in hand, he heads toward the rock formation he hopes is right. A lot of his decisions are made while drunk; drunk Tony lavished in the idea of a panic room… But bigger. Somewhere untraceable, known only to him. He’d prepared all the measures to ensure that his location couldn’t be narrowed down; had actually patented some of the software he used to do it.

The retina scans work, thankfully, and the sound of hinges opening has never sounded so good in all his life. He throws the boxes of his tools onto the workbench and promptly collapses onto the nearest seat. Unconsciousness grabs him without warning, his eyes closing without his permission.

He’ll call them tomorrow. Later. Whenever. Tony Stark might actually be a coward after all.  


	3. Lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! And of course for the lovely comments and all the kudos, I love you all umu

He startles awake.

The world around him is dark, there's pressure on his ears and building on his chest. Gasping, he rips his eyes open. He goes to talk and instead inhales water. He’s panicking now. The fear is blinding; his hands flailing around him, body twisting and turning wildly, caged like an animal, fighting the water. Yes. Water. Tony Stark is drowning.

“Sir, please listen-“

“Jarvis?!” He tries to scream but bubbles and a strangled sound are all that he can produce.

He tries to stop the biological impulse to breathe, pointing his hands down to shoot the repulsers and get him the hell out of there… But nothing happens. Renewed confusion brings his shaking palms to his face, the blurry outlines shadowy in front of him. He’s not in his armour. He’s not in his armour and he’s in water and oh, oh – Tony Stark is dying.

The idea flits past him, and it quiets the anxiety running through his veins. He can feel it, the water that’s coming in as gulps and gasps now. The corners of his vision blurring with the obsidian surroundings, the way his whole body begins to go limp.

_Tony!_

That voice. He wheezes again, inhaling another bout of liquid. Shaking his head, he tries to fight it, to find out which way is up, and get his aching limbs to cooperate with what little he has left. He wants to follow the sound but becomes disorientated once more.

_Mr Stark please…_

It rattles him violently this time. He pushes and doesn’t stop, despite no longer feeling his legs, or his right arm, he surges towards the light and comes to a surface. Exhausted, he takes uneven breaths of air; spluttering the water that was clogged in his lungs. There’s barely anything to see, it’s so murky, even now, on what he presumes to be the surface. His eyes squint with the effort of trying to adjust, meanwhile his fatigued frame barely accomplishes keeping him afloat.

Where is he?

He doesn’t know.

Painstakingly, he turns around. The world spins, leaving him nauseas and with no better a bearing than earlier. It’s only time he’s wasting now, something he has so little of; his resolve is quite quickly deteriorating.

He’s lost, but who was it he heard just now? Jarvis, no it couldn’t have been. His eyes well with tears, he logically knows that it wasn't… He can’t even bring himself to say it. In his anger his arms raise and splash violently against the water encasing him, encircling him. He watches the ripples drift away in a daze. He doesn’t notice anything’s amiss until the gentle lapping of the water across his chin lulls him into oblivion once more.

 

A cup is being pressed to his lips. The brightness of the room is horrible and he turns away. His mouth is so dry though, that he eventually turns to the ever-incessant cup that someone is trying to put through his face. Opening one eye, he scowls half-heartedly at Dummy.

“Thanks buddy,” He takes the cup and goes to drain it, finding it empty. “There was an attempt, I’d probably have done no better,” he shrugs it off, patting Dummy’s head idly and sliding his cup back onto the counter. He really was ridiculously thirsty. The nightmare was still fresh in his mind; he couldn’t bring himself to move, “Think you could try again and actually, I don’t know, put water in it?”

Dummy whirs off with a happy chirp and roll of wheels. He takes the scalpel that was next to the cup and twiddles with it.

“I’m going to have to do this myself, aren’t I?” He asks no one in particular, lifting his shirt and testing the blade against his skin.

“Sir, I’d advise against-“

“What the hell!” Tony yells, holding the small knife in the air. “Jarvis?”

“Ghost, Sir, we met briefly earlier after you finished my programming.”

“Ghost?” He tests it out on his tongue. He could get accustomed to it, and the deep growl of his voice was a soothing change from Friday. “I programmed you, just now?” 

He was looking at his tablet with abject curiosity. He’d really created Ghost and wasn’t hallucinating. Incredible.

“Yes. Now if you’re really going to do this surgery would you please allow me to run the tests before you cut yourself with-“

“Ghost, I’ve just read all the Wikihows, seriously? I’m a genius and I’m the most qualified person here, I have to do this.”

Tony is slumped across his workstation. The hole in his lung is proving to be a, how should we say, major system failure. He’s not entirely sure he _can_ do this, but if he can get an AI up and running while wholly delirious then who knows… He might just pull this off.

He knew it wasn’t Jarvis – the voice that he had heard. Wishful thinking will get him absolutely nowhere. However, for now, he’s back in his body and by using an old backup file and the glory of the internet, his AI is fully functional. The AI answers to Ghost; he categorically refuses to look too far into why.

He flings everything off the table, lying himself down across it. His chest constricts at the movement, ribs clutching a vice grip around his lungs. Sputtering, he moves his shaky hands to the blade. If he doesn’t hurry up he’ll be too dead to do anything about it, anyway.

“Ok Ghost, I don’t have any kind of anaesthetic so we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.”

With a groan, he grabs the bottle of whiskey. Scarcely managing to steady his hand long enough not to send it clattering to the floor, he brings the bottle to his chapped lips. He takes a long drag from it, choking because of the angle he’s attempting this whole operation at. He pulls the panel towards him and checks his vital signs.

“We haven’t got much time, G, so keep an eye us, would you?” Tony says, offhand, picking up the petri dish he’d placed on the table with his free hand.

His vision begins to blur, like everything has slowed down or that one time he got extremely high. Normally he could blame exhaustion, but he knows this is a lot worse and will take a lot more than a simple nap to fix.

Ghost hesitates, “Naturally, would you at least let me check that my connection to the nanobots is stable?”

Tony is drowsy. The sensation is throwing him for a loop, and he’s sure that Ghost is still talking but he’s not understanding him properly. It’s getting dark again; the alarm going off in his head is sluggish, the ice-cold fear faltering in his veins. He’s out of time.

Reopening the incision on his stomach, his wobbly fingers cut a semi-straight line. Everything is red, a deep red that’s coating his fingertips and his chest. The petri dish moves in his hand. Something clatters to the floor. Tony doesn’t hear it, not as such, but he feels the reverberation of Ghost’s voice. Ghost is not capable of human emotion, although Tony can recognise the rise and fall of his inflection as dread.

 

Something nudges him awake. It’s a piece of driftwood. Tony is here with his lonely piece of driftwood and not a care in the world. He feverishly grins into the harsh surface. It scrapes against his cheek, the texture feeling so real and yet so far away, like he’s experiencing it through someone else’s body.

He hauls himself across it, shuffling his body so that he’s no longer submerged in the water. His whole body is heavy and dripping, his chest still heaving; eyes wet from being under for so long. It’s got a musty smell, the scent wrapping around his senses and taking him away with it.

Towering trees appear before him, and he stands on feeble legs. The ground is sodden, the air thick with the humidity that follows rainfall. The wreckage that brought him here is left discarded as he takes weary steps toward the forest. The bark is a burnt colour, singed, certainly not that of a normal tree. His hand scrapes along it, pieces of wood lodging under his fingernails. It’s tangible.

_Tony!_

There it goes again! Her voice – he can’t ignore it. Not caring whether any of this is real, he takes off at a run into the woods.

“Pepper!?”

He jumps over fallen trees, dodges under finger shaped branches and collapses nearly as fast as he’d begun. The tears start in desperation, he’s doesn’t know where to find her. Hell, he doesn’t know where _he_ is.

A scream startles him. His hand rests over the scar, where his arc reactor used to give him comforting warmth, it used to remind him exactly what he can make out of an awful situation. The anxiety is still there, in the back of his mind, whispering sour nothings into his ears. Frustrated with himself, he clamps his hands over his ears.

“I AM Iron Man.” He says it once, then again and again until his practically sweating with the exertion of it. Without his suit, he’s exposed. Out here? He’s a live wire, edgy and tripping, waiting for the spark to set him off.

Another scream follows; Tony closes his eyes and counts to ten.

“I am Tony Stark,” He grunts as he gets up, balling his fists.

With the burning vegetation in his sights, he stalks back into the dense underbrush.

He’s blinking rapidly, tears flowing freely. He can’t hold them back, he hasn’t cried properly for all that he’s lost. Too afraid to call Steve’s number and have it go to voicemail. Petrified of the idea that half his friends are dead.

The loss of Pepper brings him to his knees in a clearing. The ground is still scorched, evidence of the fire that had been. And there in the centre-

He doesn’t have to get any closer than he is to know it’s the remains of her.

Desperately, he tries not to picture her final moments. Hands clasped tight around the phone that she is certain he won’t call her on but finds comfort in hoping anyway. The brown Louis Vuitton shoes that were her favourites tapping restlessly on his marble flooring. Her brow creased in a frown, the piece of hair that she keeps trying to tuck behind her ear; the inner of her lip that she bites when she’s frustrated.

The look of horror and confusion when she starts to disappear.

He can't bear his overactive imagination any longer. He’s on the floor, crying into the mud. First Peter, then Pepper. The forest morphs around him, he barely notices, except he’s now standing in a hallway.

It’s just a shoe rack, that’s all. Peter’s Converse All Star’s are on the first shelf, then Pepper’s heels and it sends shockwaves through Tony’s whole being. The visceral scream that is ripped from him doesn’t sound human. The carpet on the ground is hard beneath Tony’s knees, dusted in a fine white film.

Ash floats around him as he curls around the shoes. All gone; they’re not coming back. There’s ash on his clothes, his fingers are painted white. The more he tries to wipe it off the worse it seems to cover him. He’s having an attack again, the bile rising in his throat alongside the thrum of his erratic heartbeat. He has to get out of here. Awkwardly fumbling to his feet, he bolts for the door.

 

“Tony?”

The voice is familiar, and warm. He thinks this person is alive.

“Jesus, Tony, we thought you were dead! What the hell happened to you?!” Relief, that’s what the voice sounds like.

“Banner,” He slurs because, sue him, he’s having both an outer and inner body experience right now; this could just be another part of the simulation after all. The extreme pain he’s in appears to lean in the favour of it being real, though. “Had a moon thrown at me.”

Hysterical laughter escapes him. It’s not too soon to laugh about an actual moon being thrown at you, right?

“You, I… What?”

Tony tries to sit up, forgetting quite brilliantly that he’s lying on his table like a flayed kebab right now. He yells in pain, wincing at the feel of movement within the wound.

“One second doc,” He stretches his face, swaying it from side to side, and tries to focus first on what Bruce had said, then on his stomach. His brain feels like a jumble sale, and he’s not sure on how to get it all back inside his house. Taking his tablet with an uncoordinated swipe, he cringes. “What’s the progress like, Ghost?”

“Oh wow, Stark. You’re alive.”

Not a question this time, thanks Natasha. That means she’s alive. The bile that’s been settling in his throat eases a bit. Banner and Natasha, that’s a start.

“Barely, glad to see you are too.” His tone is shakier than what he’s used to, his vocal cords still trying to get over all the screaming he’s been doing lately.

 “We’re making slow progress it’s a very delicate procedure, you have been out for an hour Sir. I suggest you take another shot of whisky.” Ghost says finally and Tony is more than happy to oblige with doctor’s orders.

He raises the bottle into the air, toasting Ghost’s good idea, and that’s when he sees it. Or well him. Himself, in the reflection, along with Bruce and Nat and _Steve_ ’s varying degrees of horrified expressions.

“Uh,” He stutters, taking the drink anyway because he always lacked good impulse control, “Quick question, how long have we been on video chat for?”

“Stark,” Steve says and Tony’s insides dissolve into a fine mess.

He clears his throat. It’s ‘Stark’, is it. He supposes the literal apocalypse wouldn’t be enough to mend the bridges he’d destroyed with his friend.

“Cap. You look… beardier.”

It’s a cop out and he knows it. He can’t even keep eye contact with the man, coughing awkwardly and looking seriously back to his tablet. The biological nanobots he’d accidently invented were currently in the process of stitching the lining of his lung back together. The pain should be unbearable, but something about the whole situation is giving his pain receptors something else to focus on.

“It’s good that you’re alive, we could use your help,” Steve finally says, and if that isn’t the lowest blow of all.

Because that’s all Tony Stark is. He’s a brain, he’s useful. Of course Steve doesn’t care about him on a personal level; only Tony allowed himself to get mixed up in that bag of emotions. Just because Tony is currently stealing glances at him, checking that he’s the same Captain America that he’d left (now with a beard, which is doing all sorts of weird things to Tony’s stomach besides the bleeding).

No one wanted to be near Tony Stark for his companionship, he knew that even in his early days. Women would throw themselves at him, but not because he was funny or liked to listen to rock music or could build a robot from scratch using junk from your father’s garage – no. People only ever spoke to him if they wanted something. Knowing him was a trophy, he had one use and that was all.

He thought the Avengers would be different. He thought he’d found a family, people he could start to let the walls down near and trust. He and Steve didn’t get on all that well to begin with, but the years had changed that. The battles and bloodshed and drinks after a debrief with Fury.

None of it means anything to Steve, obviously. Tony must have fucked up the last good thing he had in his life; now all he has is Dummy and his AI.

“I don’t blame you if you didn’t notice,” His external walls were starting to rebuild themselves, he could be the coldest son of a bitch if he wanted to be, “I’m kinda in the middle of keyhole surgery-“

“Wha-“

Natasha gives Steve a glare, because clearly their friendship has flourished since their exile which only fuels Tony’s spite further. Steve backs down.

“Rhodey’s alive,” Bruce interjects, recognising all of that bad blood he’d missed out on, “Thor too. Rocket, he’s a racoon, we’re in Wakanda right now… There are so many dead Tony.”

“Wanda, Vision, Sam, T’Challa, all gone.” Steve interrupts again, his eyes misting over with sadness that Tony sees because of the way his voice had choked, “And Bucky. I guess you got what you wanted.”

The last bit is muttered but it might as well have been yelled in Tony’s face.

The Winter Soldier is dead. Why doesn’t he feel anything for justice for his parents? He’d tried to kill the man himself. But there’s nothing. No relief, no weight taken from his shoulders. He’s completely stunned to silence, his fingers twitching restlessly at his tablet. Maybe it’s the broken sound of defeat coming from Steve. Maybe it’s the fact that deep down he hadn’t really wanted to kill Bucky, he knew it wasn’t really his fault. He was a weapon being used by Hydra. He should have done more to help Steve.

“I’m sorry,” He says sincerely, because he is. There are so many dead across the world but to lose all these people so close to home... Superhero or not, he’s allowed to mourn his losses too.

It’s soundless across both of their video feeds. None of them seem sure of what to say. Steve leaves. The remaining eyes watch as Tony collects his nanobots into a cup and finishes sewing his stomach.

He doesn’t look back at them.

“I’ll call later. Ghost cut the line.”

Before disconnecting totally, Tony drops a few lines of code in. Their video feed pops back up. He watches, dejected, wrapping the bandages around his chest. His breathing is still worse for wear, but the ache is manageable. Drinking the last of his whiskey, he settles in to watch his friends from afar, wishing he could be with them, be the person who could be there for them. The news of the dead weighs on him; Ghost doesn't interrupt him as he sits there blankly, turning the scalpel in one hand once again deep in mourning. 


	4. 3,811,409,400

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your comments and for reading! I hope you enjoy this chapter, I'll edit the mistakes at some point... Let me know what you think (: (Also my headcannon about Thor and Rocket might turn into fanart at some point, I'll update this box if I add it)

He’s been monitoring what’s left of the Avengers near non-stop since their little talk. The room they were situated in must be that of a common room – he’s looked long enough now to see the ornate decoration, the elaborate vases and rugs. It’s beautiful and, although his soul lies dead in his chest, he longs for the warmth that he can see through the giant windows.

Rocket, the talking space racoon, spent a lot of time to begin with perched atop the oversized table. Dissembling and reassembling his gun, his gaze unfocused and lingering on something outside, Tony had sat cursed to watch this creature mourn his friends. Although Tony felt as though he’d lost everything, everyone, his team were still there. Alive. The creature seemed to understand the gravity of not hearing anything from his crew. He knew he was alone; trapped on Earth, with nowhere to go and no one to be consoled by. The guilt that Tony felt was almost as bad as the grief.

That was until Thor, with his curiously short hair and trimmed beard, had come into the room. So far as Tony knew, Rocket left as soon as any other person entered; heaving his too big gun over his shoulder, limping off to a place he couldn’t see. But Thor-

He had an effect on Rocket that he didn’t expect.

“Small rabbit,” Thor said, low and reassuring, “We’ve hardly had the time for me to say that I am sorry you now share my burden.”

Thor was standing by the window, his shadow casting into Rocket’s light. He froze, near imperceptibly if Tony wasn’t zooming his view in to focus on these two unlikely friends.

“Yeah well,” Rocket sniffed, rubbing a paw over his gun once again, “What can ya do.”

Turning, Thor began to walk towards Rocket. He offered his hand to the other, a tired smile on his face.

“Loneliness is something we have in common, friend, but is something we needn’t also share.”

Rocket slumped at this, allowing Thor’s palm to brush along the short fur on his head.

“I also see that you are wounded and I may be able to offer a solution.”

Amazed, Tony watches as Thor arranges Rocket on his shoulder, his tail lying limp and scorched down his back. He hands the racoon his gun, which he rests besides Thor’s ear. Seemingly pleased, they leave the room like that together.

Tony doesn’t realise he’s crying, his calloused hands pawing at his face uselessly. Thor has changed a lot since he’d last seen him – more than physically – he was more humble, open to others in ways he’s never seen in a God. He’s got a shared pain… Perhaps Loki is dead too. And Tony has got to stop empathising with psychopaths because, damnit, his eyes sting at the thought of Loki dying for real.

It continues like this for hours, various people coming and going. Steve is never there. From the brief flashes where he does make an appearance, his face is haggard with tension and fatigue. The suit he was wearing is gone, replaced with some loose-fitting one piece in muted cream colours. He is filled by the desire to hold that idiot by the shoulders and tell him to get some sleep. He wishes he could earn Steve’s forgiveness, to be treated as a friend again. More than anything he wants to hug him and cry his heart out. He’d hold his hand as Steve cried for Bucky, rub his back as he choked on the tears.    

He wants to call, to talk to Rhodey, or Banner, even Natasha was worth hoping for. But they never stay in the room long, always busy, always moving. He feels useless to assist in their struggles, and only thinking that he’ll annoy them or get in their way, he never does it.

The tightness in his chest hasn’t lessened. His heart feels caged beneath his ribs, beating a cacophony against the bone. He rubs a distracted hand along the scar of the arc reactor; wondering for the one thousandth time whether the doctors did indeed remove all of the shrapnel. Every lungful of air is a tremendous effort, more so than usual. Breathing an uneasy sigh, his attention refocuses to the room around him instead of the display.

“Ghost, what day is it?” He asks, tiredly.

Weeks could have passed and he’d never have noticed. His stomach aches, from his wounds or from hunger. Dummy is holding a cup out to him, arm turning gently to entice him. He nearly catches himself laughing at the absurdity of it, his only living companion is a sentient robotic arm. He takes the cup and checks it for liquid, and it surprisingly has coffee inside. Downing it in gulps, he wipes his lips; staring at his worktop properly for the first time.

He’d managed to salvage what was left of the nanotech that made up his armour from the fight. It wasn’t much, just a leg piece and a shattered arm, the remains of his face plate. There he goes again flaunting his greatest weakness to all his enemies. In the next fight he needed to be smarter, keep all of his cards close to his chest.

“Saturday, you’ve spent three days watching them.” Ghost’s voice resounds through him.

He raises an eyebrow half surprised, half troubled. Fondling the broken gauntlet, he turns an accusing gaze at the ceiling, as if he was scorning a child.

“And you just… Let me?”

“You needed it and should call again after some rest, Sir.”

Tony accepts this, too exhausted to argue with a being that has endless energy to do so. Still, if he wants to achieve anything in his battle against Thanos, he _will_ need to build new armour. Something that doesn’t expose his abilities and could withstand at least one of the Infinity Stones. He rubbed his temples, he needed to find someone with better expertise, but who?

Thor was a possibility, he had missed out on the whole Accords thing so is unlikely to hold anything against him. Wong, though, he seemed like a stronger candidate – if he’s alive. Tony is thisclose to asking Ghost to look him up, when he hears the video message tone. Confused, he turns on his heel, eying it sceptically. It shouldn’t even be possible.

He opens it, and Rhodey is sitting, looking worn out and old, staring at the screen.

“Tony,” He says, weary but fond.

“Rhodey,” Tony greets back, taking his seat.

“You scared the shit outta me Tone, honest to God when I saw you fly to that ship on the news I-“

“It was reckless I know, what I’m good at. Glad to see you’re looking nothing but older,” His voice finally started to come back, and he felt normal for the first time since the attack.

“Very funny. Are you… Ok?”

Tony laughed bitterly at that.

“No Rhodey, much as everyone else I suppose, not great but alive. So there’s that I guess.”

“And the kid?”

He was poking far too close to the open wound that will never close inside Tony. Not until he fixes this, fixes them.

“Gone, like the others.” He pauses, barely whispering the next part, “I should be dead.”

“God Tony I’m sorry, I know how much he meant to you. What the hell happened up there?”

There is a lot that he leaves out. Blank spaces in the story, things Rhodey doesn’t need to know, he looks like he’s dealing with enough at the moment anyway.

Rhodey for his part, bless him, sat there tirelessly listening throughout without speaking a word. He added some when Tony couldn’t continue, filling in what had happened in Wakanda. How Steve had gone to protect Vision, stopping Thanos’s gauntlet with his bare hand. The fact that Wanda somehow found the strength to destroy Vision’s stone _and_ hold Thanos back long enough to do so; until Thanos had undone all their struggle with a twist of his wrist. He spoke of the relief effort there in Wakanda, which is what they were assisting with, as well as worldwide. Shuri had reluctantly taken over her brother’s place, trying her best to control a broken Kingdom and a shattered world.

“For all her brilliance Tony, you’d love her,” Rhodey finishes, “There’s just too much damage. She’s been taken out of the frying pan and thrown into the proverbial fucking sun.”

Tony responds to Rhodey’s comment with this, finding the energy sapped out of him just from reliving it:

“If that stupid wizard hadn’t of given up the Time Stone, Thanos would never have made it to Earth. One life for billions, Rhodey, how can I ever live up to that? It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

Looking behind him, Rhodey talks quickly to someone off camera, not even hearing the last of what he’d said.

“Tony I gotta go, just promise me you won’t beat yourself up too much about this, ok?” Rhodey flaps an irritated hand at the person again, “If you can make it over here, it’d be great to have you back working with us for real.”

The call cuts off. Tony sits there for a minute, chewing the side of his cheek; he only stops as the acrimonious taste of copper sweeps across his tongue. Abruptly, he stands.  

“G, block all incoming calls until I say so.”

He stretches the cricks in his back, slouching over to release the pressure on his wounds. Then, he takes long, stumbling, strides towards his bathroom, closing the door with a loud ‘bang’ behind him. There’s a conversant feral panic that’s deep set in his eyes when he glances at the mirror. The same dread-filled look that he feels in his chest.

Frantically, he claws his shirt off - suddenly his clothes are too tight, the room too close and the air too claustrophobic. Behind his eyelids he sees Thanos’ cruel smile, and he can smell the ash in his nostrils. He gets his trousers off and starts the shower behind him, his hands shaking so violently he clasps them together. The breath he takes is simultaneously too deep and not deep enough, his brain searching all of the exercises he knows to try calm himself down.

“Sir-“

“Not now Ghost,” Tony grits out. He’s hardly keeping himself upright, let alone speak actual words.

In the reflection he takes a moment to assess his body. It’s a bad idea. The scars stand out angry and red against his skin, proof of his failures. Reminders that he _just won’t die_.

All the way along his left peck, the mutilation that Steve’s shield left behind sears in his mind. The feeling of strength and anger and hatred that the good Captain had channelled as he pummelled Tony’s suit leaves him with goose bumps. His skin tingles with the phantom rip of flesh as his armour had cut into him with each swipe. The stitches on his stomach have congealed blood around them, making him wonder why he didn’t just cauterise it again. On his face were large purple bruises, cuts that lead in varying depths down his neck and frankly covering most of his form.

This train of thought wasn’t exactly soothing his irregular heartbeat, and he forces himself to look away from the man he doesn’t even recognise anymore.

He all but throws himself into the hot spray of the shower, appreciating the way it pounds against him, the sound drowning some of the loathing and fear in his mind. The dirt and blood swirls around the drain. He watches it dilute in the clean water, and wonders if it’s normal to have vicious pains in every nerve of your body. Retching, Tony slides his back down the shower until he’s sat on the floor under the cooler spray.

It’s the worst attack he’s had in a long time. Immobilising, but not unexpected. Arms braced on his knees, he stares at the tainted water until it finally runs clear. He stays there a while longer, finding solace in the grey tiles beneath his feet, in the fact that he can breathe with a semblance of somewhat normal.

“You need to get up, Tony.”

Ghost’s voice is loud in Tony’s small bathroom. He covers his ears petulantly.

“Tony. You need to rest, not dwell in the shower.”

Pretending not to hear, Tony grumbles resolutely to himself. He’s not hiding, he’s just taking some time to decompress. _And get over a massive panic attack that he doesn’t need Ghost whining on at him about._

“Guardian,” Ghost growls.

“What did you call me?” Tony says, blinking as the water droplets cascade off his eyelashes. “Don’t ever call me that again.”

“It’s from the game you named me after, isn’t it? And you were ignoring me. I will do what I must, Guardian.”

“Just. Don’t. Do you know how many people are dead because of me? I am not a _Guardian_.” Tony closes his eyes again.

“3,811,409,400 confirmed deaths on this planet alone, though the responsibility you take is not nearly as accurate.”

Jarivs wasn’t like this. This AI is starting scare him with all the liberties it decides to take, even if it is for his benefit. Huffing, Tony gets to his feet.

“Can’t a man enjoy a shower? And it’s just a name G you don’t have to take it so literally.” He doesn’t want to think about the game, the one Peter showed him in their rare bonding times his Aunt’s. He felt sick just thinking about the prospect of this planet _alone_ , that’s a lot of billions without counting the rest of the universe. The shower clicks off. Tony fumbles for a towel – finding Dummy holding one for him just inches away – and sidesteps the mirror this time.

He ruffles his hair in the towel to avoid the silence.

“Why were you calling me Sir earlier Ghost?”

“It is not _me_ , per se. I spoke to you that way to give you time to adjust.” If Ghost could shrug, Tony could imagine him shrugging right now, “It no longer seems necessary to keep up the façade.”

“Did I code sass directly into your mainframe or is that something you’re learning from somewhere else,” Tony scoffs, “And on another note, I never gave you permission to make that call the other day, so what the hell is with you?!”

“You had been unresponsive for an hour; your vital signs were dropping. I thought that Jarvis may help you to return, but when that also failed I simply checked your contacts until someone answered. A female, Shuri, adapted the call to a video link.”

Leaving the towel discarded on the floor Tony slips into a pair of tracksuit bottoms and top from the drawers in the bedroom. What Ghost had said buzzed in his head. This Shuri is smart, smarter than him, he’ll need to be more cautious with his surveillance on his friends. Also, had he lost weight? The shirt certainly felt looser than he remembered his clothes being.

“Fine, but you’re not off the hook. Oh, but you can start by making yourself useful by looking for Mr Wong.”

Tony collapsed on his side on the bed. Everything hurt, an ache he knew was going to take a lifetime to get used to. His conscious was clouded by figures. No wonder the streets were thickly coated in ash. He needs to start on the new suit, he’d been stagnant with worry, near expecting people to start floating away before his eyes again, out of reach. He might even try to eat some real food. His heart still didn’t feel right and as he lies there in the darkness pleading for sleep to take him, he fists the shirt for comfort.


	5. Wizards And Portals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long... I'm making this up as I go along and with work and everything it's been hard to get into the flow. Mistakes will be fixed soon, I just wanted to get this chapter up :_) Thank you for reading, any feedback would be really appreciated!

His dream is empty and blank. He should be grateful, probably, that there’s no screaming; no Thanos, or ash nor aliens to be found. Just a simple and absolute darkness. It somehow makes him feel uncomfortable, the world is in pieces and he _should_ _be_ screaming. There should be sweat on his brow and a sob lodged in his chest – he doesn’t deserve a peaceful night sleep. Not yet.

“Ghost,” He says, forcing himself out of that infinite nothing. Nothing seems particularly off, but he knows how vivid his imagination can be. The lack of a dream is more disconcerting than a nightmare. He considers what the cause could be… “There was something in my coffee wasn’t there.”

“Me and Dummy agreed it would be beneficial for you to have a good sleep, before you stumble blindly down this destructive path.”

Tony sits there, his heart beginning to jackhammer in his chest. His coffee was spiked and he didn’t even notice. He’s been so exhausted and mentally drained that he would have gladly accepted a drink containing _anything_ ; he wouldn’t have a clue. It is an unwelcome series of thoughts, because without his panic and his fears what does he have left? The only thing he has for certain is his brain, and of course Ghost couldn’t do it alone. The fact that Dummy was in on it too, his closest friend, stings more than it should. Building robots with the ability to learn is a gift and a curse; especially when their software learns from a particularly bad role model. He takes a moment, trying to listen to his AI like he wouldn’t a close friend.

“Great, but don’t ever use Dummy like that again. I need to know that I’m me… That it’s my brain in there and I’m the one controlling it ok?”

“Of course.”

Seeming to find this satisfactory, Tony swings his legs over the side of the bed. He scrubs a hand across his chin and feels the roughness of his unshaven beard. It took him three days to shower, after all, who knows how long it will take him to properly groom himself. For once, he doesn’t even care about his appearance; there’s no reporter hanging outside his front door waiting for him to slip up. The world probably thinks he’s dead anyway. That’s a thought. Tony Stark, invisible once more. It’s better off that way.

He meanders across the bedroom, changing his bandage on his chest while he moves, searching for a clean shirt. Rifling through his drawers, Ghost’s voice almost makes him jump.

“Mr Wong is alive and still in New York,” He says, calm as ever, “I was also able to recover _some_ data from the Mark 47, though I don’t think you’re ready for that just yet.”

Tony winces at the tone. Is he really that pathetic? Can his own machine see all the flaws in his brain that render him unable to fully relive that experience again?

“It wasn’t judgement, Guardian, simply an observation.”

He glares at the panel he’s found in his hands, gripping it so tightly he can see the screen begin to invert. This isn’t how his whole ‘go back in time and save the world, again’ plan was supposed to go. There has to be a way for him to be better, he’s so sick of repeating his mistakes. Not that he is ready to dive into that rabbit hole. _Fuck_.

“Yeah, well keep your comments to yourself next time.” Tony says, moving to the workstation, “Dummy, bring me the welder. Ghost, play the rock playlist.”

The next hours pass fluidly, he’s so enthused about being able to build things the world feels a little less like it’s collapsing. Fixing the repulsors on his old armour, he manages to get them to a semi-operational state. They’ll be able to fly, anyhow. Well, sort of. It will be the jet equivalent to human jogging. He only needs a temporary replacement until he can get his brain to work on the nano-machines. His brain might be the answer – huh. He realises he’s sitting there with the end of a wrench sticking out of his mouth, saliva dripping onto his own hand. Quickly, he wipes it on his shirt, pulling a large board towards himself.

It would be on the same lines as the Extremis project, but smarter. He’s at the wheel of it so it’ll be more elegant and engineered than Hansen or Killian could ever have dreamed. Frantically scribbling on the board, he begins to outlay plans for the adjustments and facilities he’d need to synthesise it. If he could inject himself with this technology, his suit would be him, one and the same. All it would take was a series of synapses controlled by a single thought and his suit would be there, ready to rebuild and adapt on the fly. The suit could rebuild itself _whenever_.

Tony leans back in the wheelie chair, hand scraping through his hair and taking a deep breath. He can feel the neurons in his brain firing away, he missed spending hours in his workshop. He always had. Unlike his father, Tony didn’t enjoy the politics of running a company and being the world’s most eligible asshole. 

He couldn’t count (Jarvis could) how much of his life has been spent nearly blowing himself up trying to build new things. People assume he’s a selfish bastard and, really, he does little to deter their opinions. He started out in the weapons business and he knows better than anyone that nothing will change his dark past.

Back when the team first formed, he compiled a list of their attributes and weaknesses, determined to upgrade their suits and equipment to be revised to their quickly growing lists of enemies. He worked on an improved quiver for Clint, more flexible clothing with secret knife slots for Nat; even after Sokovia, he’d been trying to advance Steve’s shield. He had a prototype ready.

But, he never finds his efforts enough. He’ll continue to try to atone.

The original Iron Man suit saved his life, but he’s grown it into so much more. Out of respect for the capabilities he has, he dedicates his life to being Iron Man. To building a better world without a power-crazy controlling force behind every decision. Screw the board meetings. Fuck the hypocrisy. Or so Tony likes to believe.

The only reason Stark industries is still a company was because of Pepper. Sure, Tony was the engineer behind it all, but the only difference between him and an overzealous guy in a garage was someone else taking care of the internal affairs. He even gave up War Machine to keep the Government out. He never did trust Nick Fury, either.

So why’d he go through so much effort over the Accords? Penance. He doesn’t trust himself half the time; he’s notorious for his bad decisions. He shouldn’t have forced it on the rest of the Superhero community, though. They can’t be blamed for his paranoia.

Humming the Metallica song that’s playing, he puts down the welder. His work is not to his usual standards, but it’ll have to do for now. He’ll need to get supplies for the nanotech while he’s out.

“Where is Wong, G?”

“At the New York Sanctum, he never left.”

Picking up the fixed gauntlets, he slides the somewhat botched boots onto his feet. It wasn’t going to be a long flight; his own sanctum wasn’t _exactly_ in the middle of nowhere. Hiding in plain sight… Almost.

“Let’s go see what Wong has for us, hm?” He attaches his faceplate, relieved that the comms and GPS is working properly. He’s not in a full suit, but it wasn’t like he was going into battle.

 

Life has returned to a state of near normality. There are cars on the highway, lights in the skyscrapers. It looks relatively human. The breeze is making his flight slightly colder than he’d like but it’s almost a relief to feel it. The ash that was in the air seems to have lessened, it’s not such a struggle to see and breathe.  Flight has always had a way of calming Tony, the feeling of freedom it gives is comparative to nothing.

It was a perfectly standard course to downtown, when something picks up on his sensors.

“Hey, look it’s Iron Douche!” Someone screams from down below him.

He stabilises in the air, drifting slowly down.

“Tony fucking Stark, where the hell were you huh?! People died and where the hell where _you_ hiding?”

These are just kids. They can't possibly know that he was stranded in the middle of space, watching as everything fell apart. It's his fault Thanos made it to Earth, their hatred is justified and it cuts through him like a knife to warm butter. People used to look up to him, but is this all he’s become?

He needs to get out of here.

“What’s the matter, the drop in your stocks got your tongue?”

The kid that’s talking now picks up a brick, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out what happens next. He lobs it at Tony, who moves his shoulder slightly to miss the punt.

His tongue feels laden in his mouth, his throat constricted with words he doesn’t know how to say. Finding his falsest bravado, he takes a breath.

“What kind of a shot was that, A-Rod,” Tony puts his hands up in surrender, “I know the situation is shitty right now, we’re trying to fix it.”

“It’s a little late for that!” The shortest of them busts forward and storms up to Tony now that he’s on the ground, “My maw is dead and the Avengers… You were supposed to protect us.”

Red flashes across his screen, and he only just manages to duck as one of the group takes a swing for his head with a piece of wood.

“You used to be a hero, but maybe with your fancy armour plate your legacy can be useful to us.”

And oh, Tony does not like the smile on the boy’s face as he said it. These are just broken children, and by the sounds of it the Avengers have just ascended to Number One on America’s Most Hated List. Not that their despise is unwarranted, mind, however on top of everything else it’s another blow to his crippled self-worth. He also doesn’t want to start beating on random children, so he decides it’s better to just leave and let them –

The punch to his gut makes him wheeze. He can feel it right through his stitches and into his gaping spleen. There were a lot of them now, and sure he could fly out of there but suppose one of them takes a repulsor beam to the face. Whatever way Tony pictures this, it doesn’t end well in his favour. It rarely does, these days.

“G, what’s the best course of action here?” He asks, slightly panicked. Losing his armour would be bad and if he keeps taking hits like a punching bag he won’t be doing much better. Hurting one of the group would be much worse. He doesn’t know if he could live with himself if he did that.

“On foot, there is an alley 5 meters behind you. They have aggravated your wound.”

Tony is about to make off in a brisk dodge and run tactic, when an inky black portal opens up behind him and a hand reaches through. The kids look mystified, and Tony feels their shared confusion for a half second before he recognises the stoic face attached to the hand.

“Wizard buddy!” Tony beams, not even watching as the portal closes behind him as he’s pulled across the gap. He’s standing in Strange’s office, it doesn’t look any different from the last time he was here before… Before all this hell started.

“Are you some kind of maniac?” Wong exclaims in return, hands flustering at his sides, “You know there is more anti-Avengers graffiti in New York right now than supportive ones? You could have been captured or beaten, you’re crazy.”

It takes him a while to process what the Wizard had implied. Like every apocalypse movie he’s ever seen, it’s rarely the threat itself that brings humanity to it’s knees – it’s human beings themselves, rabid dogs turning on one another until there’s nothing human left at all. Still, there might be pockets of people who believe in the Avengers. All it takes is a little faith.

“It’s been said, once or twice,” Tony picks up an ancient looking horn from the table he’s standing next to, needing something to keep his hands busy while his mind paces through this, “Thanks for the beam up by the way, how did you know where I was?”

Wong shakes his head, muttering beneath his breath.

“I protect the sanctum and now apparently aid Tony Stark.” Tony’s expression prompts him to continue, “Strange tasked me with monitoring you when you got back to Earth and to help you any way I can.”

He places a book into Tony’s hands, and then opens a portal chucking more through with an astounding amount of accuracy.

“So you knew! The whole time you knew we were going to lose!?” Tony all but screams into the musty papers, swaying and almost losing his balance. He’s still losing blood, again, right.

“No,” Wong raises an eyebrow and gestures for him to follow, which he does, with some difficulty, “But there were measures put in place, believe it or not disaster plans have been all the rage since the battle of New York.”

Tony dies a little more inside. He drops the books onto a desk and lifts his shirt. Forgoing the whole stitches thing, despite his skin being badly damaged (he can hear Ghost in his ear _already_ ) he decides to cauterise the wound again. It hurts just as much as the first time and the area around it is blistered and red.

“Guardian you shouldn-“

“Captain fuckin’ obvious up there Ghost, just shut up for a minute,” he mutters, pulling the shirt down.

The pain is searing and Tony has to lean against the side of the books for a minute, pulling his faceplate off to take a deep, grounding breath.

Wong is just staring at him.

Tony shrugs it off. Plays it like he’s totally a-ok and everything is absolutely fine with him and the situation he’s in is unquestionably normal. It’s not, he and Wong both know, and when he picks up the nearest book, flicking through it with a dejected and absent mind, Wong doesn’t query it.

The room is well lit and finely decorated. There's not a spec of dust to be found anywhere. The smell of books fills his nostrils, and he almost forgets that there ever was a Hulk sized hole in the neatly patch floor beneath his feet. It's homely, and the aura of arrogance has left with Dr. Strange gone. Tony misses it, even if he hated the demeanor of the man. He misses  _him_. 

Wong talks animatedly about the Infinity Stones while Tony reads.

The fact that the Avengers had two of the stones at one point terrifies and frustrates Tony to no end. If only they’d destroyed them while they had them. They should never have created Ultron or put that stone in Vision. For Thanos to get it from Vision destroyed Wanda as much as it did his own creation. He shakes his head, trying to refocus.

The breadth of information flowing from Wong is almost overwhelming. The guy is like an encyclopaedia of knowledge. He tells Ghost to record the audio from their conversation, because Tony’s own mind is working a mile a minute to connect all the relevant dots.

“Have you considered reassembling the Avengers to help us?” Wong asks, not looking up from the book he’s currently citing.

Tony has. And he hasn’t. More hands on deck means more liabilities and lives he has to keep in check. He can’t be responsible for anyone else following in his footsteps. When he says it’s a one-way trip; he really does mean it. He wished that Peter wasn’t so stubborn, the world could use a friendly neighbourhood Spiderman right now. He could use that kid's phone calls to Happy, updating him on his sandwich that day, which little guy he helped. He sighs. It’s a friend, someone familiar, that he misses most of all.

He doesn't know where he stands with Steve, the leader of the Avengers. The good Captain, who has shown time and time again that he'll stand by what he believes to be right. He can't hate him anymore, there's nothing but gratitude that he's alive left in the gaps that two years without him created. Given his frosty reception the other day, it doesn't look like he'd be eager to work with Tony. 

Plus, he’s not sure on what the whole Governmental situation looks like but he can take a pretty good guess. It’s likely chaos, and no one will want to deal with whether or not _the_ Captain America – war hero, fossil, legend – is back in the country. Not to mention the God, a talking racoon, an assassin and the Hulk. It’d do no one any favours to get them back on US soil, he’s working on fixing that, though. No, it’s safer for them to be in Wakanda. They can do good in Wakanda; there’s safety in Superhero numbers.

“Yeah, it’s crossed my mind. I’m going to have a word with Thor, later. See if I can’t find out more about the oven glove of death.”

Tony takes a couple of the books in one hand, it is getting late and he has things to do; stuff to process, more data to gather.

“Wong, it’s been a pleasure. Could you portal me up to Stark Industries basement level and then to my super-secret hideout?”

Ok, so it’s not really a good secret if he keeps telling people, however he doesn’t really fancy another fly through a rough area.

“You mean that old storage dump of your Dad’s, sure.”

Sputtering Tony pales, holds up a hand in rebuttal and then throws it down.

“Don’t tell anyone Wizard, I know where you live.” Tony motions to the room, trying to sound convincing, and if anything, seeing a genuine human smile is worth it.

He thought he’d be used to how cool it is to walk through portals by now (for once, not into outer space and impending doom) and yet, the novelty isn’t lost on him. He’s able to get the titanium alloys he needs, along with some more specialist equipment, and move them to his den in one simple throw. It’s a high point of his time back on Earth.

“I must get back to the Sanctum,” Wong declares, once Tony is finished.

“Keep in touch, Wizard,” Tony makes a phone shape out of his hand and shakes it by his head.

Wong closes the portal.

“There have been four attempts to contact you, two from Colonel Rhodes, one from Mr Banner and one from Shuri.” Ghost says, impassively, as Tony scoots past Dummy to set up an electron microscope on the desk. “She was very nearly successful in her attempts to get through.”

“I wondered why you’d been so quiet, hackers sucking up all your processing?” Tony should be more concerned that so many people have tried to call him. Had something happened? Unfortunately, his emotional instability can only handle lashing out at his AI, at the moment. “Or did someone spike your coffee too?”

“Being irritable won’t deter me, and since you’re choosing to act particularly peevish today I suppose you won’t want an update on the anti-avenger climate in New York.”

Tony’s interest is peaked, and with everything in his workspace back in order he thinks about how aggressively certain those kids were back in the street. Definitely not a good time for the rest of the gang to show back up. He’s got a lot on his mind now though, and since he won’t be going out again any time soon he waves Ghost off. The design of the Mark 48 needs to be worked on, there’s a plethora of Infinity Stone magic to go through and he needs to talk to Thor. He hasn’t got time for New York’s personal vendettas right now.

“Nope, Ghost,” he grins, “I’m actually busy.”

ACDC starts blaring through his speakers.

It’s time to get to work.


	6. Practicing Bad Habits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, this is going to be the slowest burn to ever burn slow for the Steve/Tony, but I promise, they'll get there!1!

“You know what Dummy, I should have made you a coffee machine instead.” Tony says, picking up the most recent item to fall victim to Dummy’s clumsiness. “I could totally change that hand to a coffee pot and add a heating element.”

His voice is airy, light, his eyes following Dummy as his bot rolls backwards to scoot away from him.

“But then I couldn’t do that to my favourite, could I Dummy?”

On cue, Dummy rushes over with a screech and the pair of pliers that had got thrown across the room when he’d knocked the tray beside Tony. Fondly, he pats his head and takes the pliers. His body still aches, like he’d slept with someone hammering at him with a crowbar all night. Predictably, Ghost had warned him, the wound on his stomach had gotten infected too. So, he’s got constant nausea and drugs filtering through his system, and a persistent sting every time he moves. He deserves it though, this is his atonement.

The progress otherwise had been slow going; there had been set backs thrown at him left right and centre.

He still had the formula for Extremis - and not the half botched one - the formula he fixed, thank you. Mixing his nanotech with Extremis had some interesting results. The first time he tried it, it blew up half his desk, which was fun. He’d been busy refining his bots after that. Making them smaller, stronger and less likely to spontaneously combust. With a couple more tweaks, he’ll get Ghost to start running the numbers properly, and after that… He’ll inject himself and hope his brain can withstand his madness one more time.

(It was lucky that Wong had taken a likening to him, forced or not, because without the mystical coffee portal Tony wouldn’t have gotten as far as he had.)

The books Wong had let him borrow were the worst part of it all. Even with Ghost scanning over half the material, he’d learnt very little about the stones architecture or the gauntlet. Half of his work space had books splayed across them, with every available digital service covered in annotations and ramblings from Tony’s mind. With each stone came its own board, he’d categorised it into flaws, strengths and possible loopholes.

While the reality stone truly does terrify him the most, it’s the not the least containable. Time is his real concern. If Thanos closes his fist he could readily undo any progress Tony would have made in stopping him. Although, Tony suspects that like a cat to an injured mouse, Thanos will humour him. He’ll allow him feeble attempts to match a God – ha – with a fist full of the most powerful weapon, if only to make his end more satisfying for himself.

Tony knows. There’s nothing better than beating someone of an intellectual level as well as a physical fight. Hammer taught him that, because he gave him the chance not only to destroy him with might, but with a brilliance unique to Tony alone.

It was the reason Howard hated him so much, Tony continues fiddling with the pliers, creating figure eights and loops with his fingers, consumed by the pivotal memory of his father. Howard’s life became finding Captain America. Maybe he did truly like him, Tony didn’t know. All the can think of is the business man that ran that overactive brain; his golden goose slammed into ice with the serum that could have made him millions. He hates thinking about Steve like that; Steve only had good things to say about his Da. Nobody knew what it was like to live with the man, be looked down on by the man, be told whenever he decided to show up that he would never be half the man Steve Rogers was.

And maybe Tony knew it too. But what had made Howard amazing in the tech industry had inadvertently made his son excel further than anyone would believe. How could that scruffy, shy boy turn into an eccentric Superhero with a family of super people?

He went from dismantling remotes and radios to building cars in leaps and bounds. It didn’t matter to Howard, though. The Super Soldier was still missing. The only thing Tony could have actually done right in his eyes was find Steve himself – then, he supposed, the rush of emotion in Howard’s eyes would be directed at Cap and not him, as he once again would drift into the background.

Despite all the ways he had tried to distance himself from his father, Wanda’s vision inserts itself into the forefront of his mind. All of his friends, dead. The life he’d built with them – ruined. And it’s not just a horrifying possibility anymore. It’s his reality and just like Howard he dragged everyone he ever loved down with him.

Shaking his head, Tony puts down the pliers. The twinge in his chest is back, and he can hear rather than feel the force with which he’s trying to breathe. It’s one of the moments where he knows there’s an even chance of him having a full-blown attack or just defaulting to his factory settings; through his panic he notices Ghost. He’s learned that about himself, or the AI, that whenever he feels panicked, dimming the lights and playing Pink Floyd in the room helps. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s how it amplifies the glow of his bots, his panels, all the things he built himself to make him feel less… Lonely.

Truly, he must be the most pathetic being in the universe.

There has to be a way to sort his brain into folders like his computer. It will absolutely end in failure if big, purple and ugly can get a hint of any of his real fears with the reality stone. Water. Howard. Everyone he knows and loves dying.

He’d already been to the previews and the extended cut to that one – he can hardly believe he let it come true.

But, he had a point before his mind slithered to that horrible tangent. A point… He has to use Thanos’ gloating to his advantage. That, and Thanos must not under any single circumstance close his fist.

To compartmentalise the way Tony’s brain likes to: build the suit, distract Scrotum-Hulk and keep the fist open. He’d almost managed it once, with next to no planning specifically _for_ Thanos. All he needs is to have a stronger blast, or magnet. Something with a bit more juice to hold off both Thanos’ power and the Gauntlet.

Screw all of that God mumbojumbo (the irony that he is personally very close with a God, and has enough evidence to say that Gods, as a whole, exist, isn’t lost on him) with those stones you have everything you need to mess with the universe at a fundamental level. You don’t even have to be a God. I mean certainly, Thanos’ species had an advantage over a comparatively weak body like Tony, but there are no rules here. Thanos’ was just the first guy to think of and succeed in collecting all the stones at once.

Thanos - 1

Avengers - 0

That does mean there’s a chance, a very slim one, that Tony can withstand whatever forces or powers that be long enough to hit rewind. Tony knows that the hardest part of all will be choosing when to stop. How many can he save? He already knows the answer isn’t going to be enough to satiate him.

Logically, too, Vision will remain dead along with Gamora, basically anyone who was involved with the possession of a stone. He can imagine the rips in the fabric of time and space the extensive amount of ‘ctrl-z’ he’ll be doing will create. He should probably talk to Bruce about that. Or Thor. Also, how is he going to get into space in the first place? He hasn’t got a clue.

Shit, he really needs to talk to Thor.

He hops off the bar stool and flops weakly into his wheely chair. Pushing backwards, he spins himself the right way and catches himself on the desk by the Wakanda Monitor. He waits approximately two seconds of no one being there before spamming call. He chews on a pen in the meantime, leaning back in his chair to grab his latest coffee, pulling a face as he swallows the cold liquid.

“Any luck on finding out what the gauntlet is made of yet, G?” Tony asks, keeping his eyes trained on the screen.

“I do not know, the gauntlet itself does not feature much in the literature.”

He hmphs in reply, irritably tapping the desk while he waits.

Some Vibranium would have come in handy for the basis of his new suit; toughest material on Earth would give him piece of mind in case Thanos decides to rearrange any more of the solar system. He doesn’t have any, though, and he doesn’t really fancy asking the Queen of Wakanda for a handout at a time like this. 

Time seems to slow down then, as allows his eyelids to slip closed and leans on his hands. He’s tired, so tired, all the damn time. However, if he avoids sleep, he avoids the nightmares and it helps him to stay busy. To keep his brain focused on what needs fixing, rather than on what he’d failed to keep safe. Though his best efforts to keep his mind off of Peter, Strange, the Guardians, he can’t help himself when it comes to periods of rest. When he has to wait for something to scan, or heat up, or someone to answer his call… Peter’s apologies filter into his ears. The venom in Steve’s voice the first chance he had to be happy Steve was alive. Natasha’s face when she had told him there was still no word on Barton.

“Stark?”

His head jerks up at the sound of her voice. He blinks rapidly, he hadn’t fallen asleep, he had just been waiting and then-

“Nat, you look better.” He aims to sound less like he’s rasping at Death’s door, but judging by her expression, she wasn’t buying it.

“And you still look like shit,” She moves a lock of hair out of her face, flicking her eyes from his to somewhere above his head.

On any normal day, Natasha would be impossible to read; Tony’s too exhausted to be looking properly and she’s far too careful with her emotions, however, Tony spots the sadness on her face nonetheless. They’re both getting sloppy.

“Any word on Katniss?”

Her lip curves up in a half smile. Tony considers it a miraculous win.

“Nothing, but knowing Barton that could be good or bad. I’m actually heading out, tomorrow, to look for him.”

The last part of her sentence is hushed, and Tony feels like he’s in the courtyard being given a cigarette to smoke by the older kids.

“Let me guess, you haven’t told anyone? Don’t you think they’ll be worried where you are?”

He keeps watching her this time, not exactly thrilled about the idea of someone going awol. She’s a big girl and could kill Tony with her pinky, but he worries, because if she’s not in Wakanda, and Clint’s god knows where, who is watching her back? Obviously, he will be. Sometimes he wishes Ghost was a direct link in his head, so that he could get the hell on with finding a way to track her already.

Nat scoffs.

“Thor and Rocket left yesterday, and the people here have more to worry about than the white people who brought the universe to fight on their doorstep. I need time, and I need to find Clint.”

Tony’s stomach drops.

“Thor’s _gone_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long to update, I had to put my dog down two weeks ago and I wasn't doing great. Still not doing great, actually, but this was the first time I felt like writing so, yeah. More of a filler but hopefully more coming quicker after this.


	7. Today's Special: Regrets

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We finally get my bby Steve's POV. I promise to get them together in the next chapter!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, any comments would be really appreciated :)

Steve awoke the same way he has for the past 2 years: sitting upright with a bolt of movement, sweat trickling down his brow; fingers resting on the phone in his pocket.

Only, the phone isn’t there anymore.

He threw it at the wall as soon as his conversation with Bruce ended. Why did Tony have to be so damn prideful? Look at what it had cost him, cost _them_. Steve knew that he should have called sooner; two years on the run had been hell. He was grateful for Sam and Nat because without them, he may have lost the will entirely. And then there was Bucky. He chokes on his inhale at the thought of his best friend. He’d lost him so many times, but like a bungee he’d somehow always managed to drag him back to his side. Until Wakanda. Until Thanos. Until Tony dove head first into another alien spaceship with absolutely no thought to his _team_ or his _friends_.

 

They weren’t friends – not anymore. Perhaps that’s why this particular cold sweat is bothering him the most. No matter the situation between them, Steve didn’t want Tony dead. When he saw the news, he was angry at Tony, with Tony, because the man has about as much regard for his own safety as a pistachio shell. He wanted Tony to be a team player to stop him from recklessly and needlessly putting himself in danger, then putting everyone else in danger trying to help Tony. It’s infuriating. Tony is infuriating.

Maybe that’s another reason Steve doesn’t want him dead.

He'd gotten so used to people following his orders without question that, of course, the son of Howard Stark would be the one to do a constant 180 on him. Tony didn’t listen to anyone, sometimes not even himself, and that agitated Steve to no end. The truth though, the truth snuffs all that anger out. He likes Tony too much _because_ of everything he does. Tony who is ridiculously witty and continuously runs rings around him with his sharp mind and sparkling eyes; who takes the serious things seriously and everything else in his stride; who makes it his personal mission to go against Steve at every possible move.

Steve is hopelessly in love with the man.

It’s a conclusion that hit Steve like a shield to the chest. It had occurred to him previously, the future when Steve woke up held a lot of possibilities and Tony was one of them. Incredible. More importantly, Tony didn’t put him on a pedestal. He treated Steve like they’d been bickering for years, not like Steve had missed the last seventy of them. It slammed him into oblivion, while living in the Avengers Tower with the team. They had a home. He was almost whole – for a time before finding out Bucky was _alive_.

It was stupid and, like Steve has thought plenty of times before, infuriating. Even before the world collapsing beneath his finger tips again, Tony had Pepper and Steve had Bucky. They were two constants in both their lives. He was supposed to save them all again; sometimes he longs for old Hydra days in the war, when enemies had faces you could recognise and the science was mad but originated on Earth.

He sighs, clenching his fist in the flimsy sheet. The heat of Wakanda floated through his window, as a soothing balm and warm reminder that he wasn’t under ice. It felt almost peaceful, if it weren’t for the chaos awaiting him in the Palace.

In a weird way he preferred the anarchy; if he had nothing to do all he’d have is to sit and think about all he’s lost, from both his past and present life. Having to sort through the mess was time consuming but necessary, with losses for Wakanda taken in all factions. He wished they hadn’t brought the fight here, although he highly doubts they would have fought as valiantly as they did without T’Challa’s help.

Walking through the streets of Wakanda is quiet, nothing close to the noise of New York. People are around but they keep to themselves, busy with mourning or rebuilding. The dust catches in the wind and breezes past his face, it reminds him of old warehouses and abandoned lots. It’s not a fond memory.

He reaches the Palace and is greeted by a guard who looks tired, unwavering on protecting the last Princess. Shuri has been more than hospitable, offering Steve a room and all, however he preferred to find a small place to stay in the city. It was louder down there, the thrums of life evident in the walls and shouts of passing people. He craves those sounds. He can’t stand the silence. One thing that carried him over from the army was comfort in familiar sounds – you were either pressed up against another soldier or lucky enough to get a cot in a room with many others. Nothing is more unsettling than silence, like the echo of the snap, it rips through him with the shockwaves of a blast.

Out of instinct he heads to the common room, hoping to run into Thor, or Nat, to see a face he’s become accustomed to, a repetitive counter measure to prove that some of them aren’t lost.

The curtains are open in the room, the sun bright and cascading long shadows across the table in the centre. He takes a seat, hard. The weight of being Captain America is crushing him now, he still hasn’t completely found the switch to just being Steve. Bucky knew it; he could perform every button press and shutdown sequence without having to ask at all. Tony could, too.

He wishes he had just told Tony about Bucky, about his parents. Of course Tony would understand. The man has enough issues to fill an encyclopaedia, he’s always treated Banner and the Big Guy with respect, he learned sign language to communicate comfortably with Clint – even though the man has the most advanced hearing aid Stark could come up with – and Natasha used to walk about with just the one knife on her in the Tower. For the brash and arrogant front he puts up, Tony cared, a lot, despite often forgetting to show it at appropriate times.

Except the massive Ultron disaster. How he dealt with Wanda. The Accords.

Steve closes his eyes tight shut, knuckles pressing into his sockets until he sees stars. He couldn’t risk losing Bucky again, not to Tony. He was selfish but he didn’t care, Bucky deserved better than all the shit he consistently got thrown at him, from way back when they were kids all the way up to now. Now, where Steve is once again lost, his best friend dead and aliens knocking at their door more often than not. 

His eyes wander to the elaborate computer system that has been set up at the end of the table. Thanks to Shuri, they actually get to keep an eye on him. Not that Tony gets to know that. She said it was only fair seeing as he technically spied on them first. Steve pulls a chair out, moving closer to the screen, with his elbows balanced on his knees. Tony is standing by his workstation (not the one in the Tower, which leads Steve to wonder where in the world Tony _is_ … besides the rhythm of _safe, safe, safe_ in Steve’s ears) staring at panels covered in all sorts of nonsense. He’s pacing; lips poised in thought; hands running through his hair; Dummy hovering beside him. Tony is limping too, his body tight when he moves at a certain angle and thick bandages visible under his shirt.

“Hey,” Nat says, her voice hard, dropping into the seat beside him, “Thor and Rocket left last night.”

“What?!” Steve’s head whips round.

“Yeah, guess they thought they could try figure something out by poking around in space. Thor’s axe is pretty handy for jumping planets.”

Her smile is rueful, Steve knows her mind is elsewhere. He wonders where Thor will go, what with his people gone and a talking space raccoon glued to his shoulder. Absently, he panics about how to contact him if something big and bad comes to Earth. At this point, Earth is half beat. 

“Still no word from Barton?”

She shakes her head, staring at the screen with Tony on it. Neither of them says anything for a minute. Steve knows this is her way to scold him, her face still tight as she watches Tony lean on the counter. He treated Tony horribly on that first live feed, and he’s not entirely sure what came over him.

At first, he was ecstatic Tony was alive. The last he’d seen of him was the Iron Man suit heading into space. It could have been a decoy, Steve knows Tony got engaged to Pepper, but Spider Man followed him up there. There’s no way Tony would let that kid out of his sight. Steve had time to ponder this, you see, because Ghost (another AI) called Bruce and Shuri walked them through making it a video feed, for peace of mind of all parties. That was when things went south. Although Ghost had warned them, Steve doesn’t think any of them were ready to see the state Tony was in.

Blood was everywhere and Tony’s slumped body was twitching on the worktop. A gaping hole in his stomach nearly had Steve pushing the others out of the way to get to the screen. His first reaction was that he was recreating his time in Afghanistan, putting an arc reactor back in… He’s not convinced the truth is much better.

Tony screamed loudly, making all of them except Nat jump. He was crying too, great sobs that convulsed his unconscious body once more. Part of Steve thought this is what Tony Stark dying looked like, or maybe the brainwashing Bucky was subjected to.

Then he woke up, bleary with his dirt and blood clumped hair. His arms were badly bruised, cuts and scrapes littering every body part in view. Tony spoke a few words to his – Ghost – and in true Tony form reached for a drink. His eyes were wide and horrified, the split second in Tony’s mind to flop off that bench and out of view was visible for a half second before he downed the whiskey.

Steve hadn’t got a clue what he was going to say to Tony when they were both healthy and the world hadn’t partially ended; he was at a complete loss at what to say to him now. Nat and Bruce exchanged their pleasantries, and then Tony just looked at him. His stupid calculating eyes breezing over him like Steve was the one who, apparently, had a moon thrown at him and somehow got back from outer space to be performing surgery on himself.

And, he can admit, his default state was being exasperated with Tony. Not with any heat, because all that anger is there to mask the _fear_ , _worry_ and extreme anguish that was fluttering in his stomach and up his throat.

Saying ‘Stark’ appeared to knock the wind out of Tony. He complimented Steve’s dishevelled state, _asshole_. He starts with something genuine, he is glad Tony is alive, so very glad. Gladder than he can let any of the ex-team ever know. He ruined it with asking Tony for help. Quite obviously, Tony was in no state to be doing anything other than healing. There were little parts of the Iron Man armour, around him, imbedded in some of his wounds. Steve’s mouth was careless, and he hid behind berating Tony to stop himself from gushing his worry all over the room.

Why Natasha is partially ignoring him is for his next stunt. The final salt in the wound Steve could throw before Nat could step in. Bucky was dead and Tony was alive and he didn’t _blame_ Tony… He didn’t… He didn’t… Yet, his brain kept helpfully supplying him with the basis that if they’d been together, the Avengers as a team, all of them, they might have stood a chance. Instead, he ends up hurting Tony even more.

“You need to talk to him,” Natasha says, from behind him. He’s not sure when she moved.

Grunting, he moves the chair a bit closer to Tony on the screen.

“He’s trying to figure it out you know,” She says, after waiting for a moment for Steve to reply further, “A way to bring them back.”

Steve almost dares to hope, to believe that Tony can do it. He’s brilliant, amazing, but the thought of trying to fix this mess on his own will kill Tony. Tony’s greatest enemy has always been himself, everybody who got to know him learned that.

Hearing the rustle of her fabric as she turns, Steve looks over his shoulder to Natasha. Her shoulders slump and she lets out a breath.

“Have you noticed, that Spider kid isn’t with him?”

Natasha leaves and Steve roams his eyes around Tony’s workshop for a sign of another person living with him. No one. Fuck, Steve thinks. Tony lost… There is no sign of Pepper either. He feels his heart tear in his chest; he owes him a decent apology.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ((Also sorry for another filler (and for repeating the Tony waking up bit, it was relevant to see Steve's POV), but we're gearing up for something big reeeeeal soon))


	8. Nanobots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! Things are finally starting to come together, and I'm pretty happy with it for once. Please leave any comments or suggestions, I really appreciate every single one :)
> 
> Also for those of you who don't know who the voice of Ghost is, watch this, Chris is amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWwvR6cSH4o

Tony glanced at the panel to his left, fingers brushing against the side of his worktop. The Anti Avengers situation just got a hell of a lot worse – for him anyway. Those kids who cornered him the other day only went and blabbed to the papers. Now there’s some crazy witch hunt going on, with his head on a spike as the prize. He grimaces. Finding Wong had been a necessity, he needed that intel. Half of New York is going to be out looking for him, a quarter of them calling him everything you can think of under the sun and the rest will be impervious to why he matters at all... It’s added stress he didn’t want to deal with. The risk of being caught unawares was starting to get to Tony too; if he’s trapped on a street again the chances of it going south is definite.

He kept a careful eye on all the major channels and who was fighting in who’s corner. It was only a matter of time before someone decided to drag the rest of his team into this, and he needed to start on a contingency plan for them too. The Avengers are going to want to come home at some point, he’ll need to take the heat for this colossal fuck up. It’s not as though it’s difficult for him to fall into his old stereotype (there’s one, just for him) and take the public eye like a magpie to a shiny watch. Perhaps a publicity stunt, or a statement on behalf of the Avengers. He could clear up some bad blood between them, too.

At the moment, a reporter is standing at ground level where the old Avengers Tower used to be; there are people dressed up in disfigured outfits of the various heroes, spraying the sidewalk with numerous creative and unflattering slurs. The overweight man in a Captain America suit makes a thrusting motion and then flips off the camera, which is so not Steve Tony almost laughs at it.

Briefly his mind wanders to Natasha, and he flickers his eyes to the panel with her little blinking light. She’d reluctantly agreed to pick up a phone from the airport on her way to Budapest, so he could keep an eye on her and she could call in if she was in trouble. What he hadn’t told her was that he’s also monitoring every camera feed he can get access to, running her, Barton and various other people through facial recognition just in case. Tony frowns. He feels like constantly counting his ducks before one of them gets blown to pieces. He shivers, the phantom feel of ash on his skin. Her light flashes on the screen, and he takes some comfort in that.

He walks to a glowing piece of metal on the table against the wall, opposite the monitors. A memento from Sokovia that had been splintered by Thor’s lightening. It kept an iridescent glow and Tony wondered if it was connected to Thor’s hammer in some way. Probably not, though, after Mjolnir was destroyed it is more likely to be a mass of charged, useless particles. That leaves Tony with option two. His plan currently consists of hacking the International Space Station and broadcasting a frequency out there that hopefully Thor will understand and respond to. And accomplishing all of that, without accidentally inviting every alien race to Earth or not getting arrested for compromising Government property. Breathing harshly through his nose, he rubs a hand across his brow.

He can’t remember the last time he slept. It feels like a never-ending blur, with the days conjoining into an unyielding stretch of his mental capabilities. The wound on his chest has started to heal properly now, with bending not seeming to cost him a few hours off his life. The skin still looks infected, an angry pulsing red, but it’s not exuding puss or anything so he’s not too worried. He’s walked off worse. Or maybe he hasn’t, he’s lay in four feet of snow resigned to succumb to the numbness of his injuries, trapped in his own suit.

“I have completed the checks on the latest iteration of the nanobots,” Ghost growls. Tony is more or less used to his general demeanour now, and the low rumble is both comforting and somewhat assertive at the same time. Like a strong Dad – or how Tony imagines a Dad would be. His experience was fairly limited, after all. It’s also hilarious to get Ghost to say ridiculous things because of the depth of his voice. In the hours he spent scouring books, he had Ghost read countless nursery rhymes to keep him amused.

He claps his hands together and pops his lips. Realistically, he shouldn’t even _think_ about what he’s thinking about right now. In order to test these bots, he was going to revert back to his mad scientist training. Tony learned better than anyone that if you want to know what the reaction is going to be, your best bet is to try it yourself. His hypothesis usually ended with him getting hurt, but what’s a few more bumps to a washed-up hero? There might be improvements on his health but it’s not like he can fling himself around… Who is he kidding? All of his impulse control floated away a few weeks ago.

“Dummy, grab me a scalpel,” He jumps to his feet, suddenly invigorated, “G, can you limit the processors to just the muscles and nerves in my feet?”

“Of course.”

If he’s going to do this, he’ll do it with the appropriate amount of absurdity and nostalgia. Just like the first time, he’s going to relearn how to fly; using his brain to send the correct messages is going to be a struggle but learning to control and have them come to life around his feet at the same time, well, it’s going to be interesting to say the least. The flying part he’s confident on, and his clammy hands grasp the side of the worktop as the same rush of equal part exhilaration and anticipation for the smacking of his limbs on the marble floor courses through him.

Dummy brings over various things, first a cup. An empty cup. Tony doesn’t even bother gracing him with a statement, he pushes the cup back into his claw and continues clearing his desk. The books are not so neatly stacked to the side of the room and the rest of his equipment is effectively pushed to one side. He enters a code onto the surface and pulls a lever on the side. A crunching of metal fills the room, a soft hum following as the table begins to move. Electromagnets in the base of all of his furniture means that redesigning the room is a piece of cake. He pushes the table as far as he can, then drops it back into place. Making the point of flicking his eyes at Dummy, he sees him about to pick up one of the books _he just moved_.

“Dummy!” He says, exasperated. “The tray is right there _please_. I’m counting on you to bring the bandages when I undoubtably fuck this up.”

Obediently, Dummy beeps a few times. He successfully picks up the tray, without dropping the contents everywhere like Tony expected him to and brings it to the table.

“Good boy, now go wait somewhere I won’t land on you, ok?”

A few more whirrs and scuffs of wheels, and Dummy is safely out of the way.

On the table, Tony stares down at his feet. He takes one of the syringes and opens the petri dish with the first completed sample of nanobots. With his free hand, he makes a small incision along the top of his foot.

“Alright people, it’s game time.”

Injecting a small about of the bots into his right foot, he feels a terrible burning and tingle swarm into his toes. It’s like wearing a shoe that’s too small on the _inside_ of his foot. Or his whole foot has become the embodiment of TV static. Quickly brandishing a couple of swears, he cuts and jabs the needle into the other foot as well. Awful stinging begins to rise up his leg and he starts to panic (although Ghost doesn’t say anything) he can thankfully tell after a few moments that they’re moving back down towards his ankle.

Sat on the table, he braces himself for a few moments. He lounges back, like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, gritting his teeth until the heat finally subsides. Closing his eyes, he tries to visualise jet boots on his feet, hell he’d pat himself on the back for getting a shoe of some sort.

The stinging rises and he gasps out, forcing himself to fight through the pain; nothing happens. He grunts, clearing his mind again. He used to have an amazing mind palace, unfortunately situations of late have left him jumbled and disorganised.

Boots.

Gauntlets.

Jets.

His lower legs might as well be on fire. It lasts for a full minute before he gives a frustrated thump on the counter. Climbing up so that he’s standing on the table, he winces at the strains on his lower leg muscles and wriggles his toes. It makes him feel nauseas and he’s never had vertigo until now. He throws off the uneasy sensation and jumps off the edge with the expected amount of grace (none at all).

Cold marble slaps beneath his bare feet, and the sharp pain sends him careening forward onto all fours. A few seconds later, he feels something growing around his toes. He rolls onto his ass, grabbing the offending foot into his hand. Armour plate is messily assembling itself around the sole of his foot; it’s warmer than he expected it to feel.

“Huh,” He says out loud, not entirely expecting it to work at all, “G, everything going ok?”

“The nanobots are struggling to fully connect to your CNS, I’m investigating the fluctuating temperature. Other than that, I would call this a success, Guardian.”

Tony rolls his eyes. He hadn’t managed to get Ghost to drop the whole ‘I’m from a video game’ thing, so he was forced to put up with his overextension of literal references.

Confident, he climbs back onto the table.

Shoes, he thinks.

Taking the leap again, he trips as the boot almost completely forms around his right foot; the sudden change of weight caught him completely off guard. So did Dummy, claw outstretched and tangled in bandages standing over him. The slight and familiar trickle of blood seeps down his forehead. What did he hit anyway?

It doesn’t matter. There was now a half decent boot on a foot, and he must have hit his head harder than he thought because he’s standing dumbly grinning at his feet. Forcing the nanobots back into his body was harder than it should have been, requiring him to sit down again.

This pattern continued until time was merely constructed by his successes and failures. He’s got bruises on top of bruises, a lump on his elbow, his feet don’t feel attached to his body and frankly he’s not sure if he could handle the full body version of this.

Finally, he’s lying on the floor, two boots on his feet. He’s sweating from the exertion, a mixture of blood and salt on his shirt as he wipes his forehead. He hears the video call sound from somewhere above him. A sigh escapes his lips. Pushing back with his hands, he uses the thrusters to hover back to his feet.

“Answer the call G,” He says, his back to the camera, body drifting towards the desk. He shuffles with the petri dishes with the rest of the bots in. “Uh hello?”

“Tony.”

Something in Tony’s body drops, his stomach; his heart; his brain. He swallows, checking his thousand-watt smile was in place.

“Steve, it’s,” he clears his throat, clicking his fingers together, “Good to see you.”

Steve’s body is tense, his shoulders hard set and his brow creased in a defined displeased line.

“Natasha left, a couple of days ago.”

Tony closes his eyes, trying to will his boots off.

“Yeah, I know.”

He’s surprised to see that Steve’s body seems to slump further into itself.

“She told you, that she was going?”

Tony nods as much, slowly, gauging Steve’s reaction.

“I’ve been trying to keep everyone together,” Steve laughs, humourlessly, “But everyone has someone to look for, or something to go back to… Without Buck, I, it’s just me.”

There were a lot of things Tony was prepared for, a shouting match – absolutely. Screaming the place down, undoubtably. One of them cutting the other off, sure! Steve breaking down, being emotionally vulnerable and telling Tony, of all people, was unprecedented.

“I’m sure Wakanda could use Captain America for a while longer,” He hedges.

Steve half smiles, looking down and shaking his head. “Even you look busy, I should… Let you get back to whatever it is you’re doing.”

“Wait, Ste-“

“Guardian, the facial recognition has got a hit.”

Tony’s words freeze in his mouth, his whole body changing from desperate to be talking to Steve at last, to near enough Iron Man.

“Ghost, prepare the rest of the bots.” He hurries to the table, cleaning the scalpel. Using the tablet as a mirror and guided by the map he makes a small cut at the base of his neck.

“Tony, what’s going on?” Steve is standing up, imploring him with those stupid, perfect, eyes.

“Can’t chat, Steve.” He tips the bots so they run down his neck and into the wound. The burning sensation is so much worse than before, and a scream tears from his lips. “Busy, doing… Stuff.”

Body hitting the floor, he spasms for a minute. The bandage Dummy had dropped a while ago is close by, and he wraps it around his neck. After a minute he takes it off again, there’s no point in choking to death on a bandage; the wound should close itself soon, anyway.

He finds the strength to get to his feet. In his mind he imagines the faceplate sliding over him, the shoulders encasing him, backplate slotting into place and armour growing down his legs. Impressed with himself he heads for the door.

“Where we headed, G?”


	9. Kids Are Like Pets... Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me far too long to update, I'm sorry!
> 
> Shameless God Of War references, and hey look, a new character to interact with everyone! This has taken a turn I didn't expect with this story so I'm excited to see how this plays out.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!

“Guardian, there is a problem.”

Tony can see the flashing warning messages and errors on his augmented screen. Big angry red letters, a wheezing sound from his jets; he tsks, trying to push himself to fly for a little bit longer.

“Oh yeah, how long have a got until it becomes a real issue?” Tony says, shifting his posture to be as aerodynamic as humanly possible.

His right boot sputters, cutting off suddenly and haphazardly spurring into life in the same breath.

“It has become a real issue.” Ghost deadpans, and Tony can’t help the snicker he makes. Ghost could make good news sound bad.

This, Tony thinks, is about to be a new low point in his life.

He’s a genius, which is accurate, and he’s built more machines (both correctly and incorrectly, but in his opinion if something doesn’t go wrong _you’re_ inventing wrong) than he really cares to think about. From the depths of an Afghanistan cave, after having a car battery strapped to his chest, he made a flamethrower armour mash up that somehow saved his life. He invented the damn arc reactor to keep him alive. SHIELD, the largest secret organisation for protecting Earth personally consults  _him_ for technology and weapons. 

Bite him, though, because right now, he wants to groan so hard he self implodes.

The bots have no energy source. He’s an idiot. The world’s leading supplier of clean, affordable energy and he built a damn suit that has no battery. This is serious day one stuff. It’s using just the jumps and starts of his body, and it’s not even nearly enough. He can feel himself slowing in the air, the plates around his arm absorbing themselves back into his skin beyond his will. His right boot has given up completely; it takes all of his training to keep himself from dropping like a lead balloon from the sky. It forces him to land, not gently, still a mile from his target destination. Frustrated and disappointed in himself, he flexes his partially covered fingers.

 _Guess we’re doing the rest of this on foot,_ he thinks irritably, compelling his limbs into action. Thank God Pepper used to drag him on her morning jogs, or he would have had to of hailed a cab by now. That's all a distant dream, somewhere deep and unobtainable in the backs of his mind. The streets are bustling, and several people are pointing at him, whipping their phones out to record Iron Man sprinting down the street. It occurs to him after the first block that he’s probably going to be in more trouble in the suit than out of it at this point, unless one hundred percent necessary. He risks a breather behind a dumpster and wills the bots back into his body, his skin crawling at the sensation of them moving.

Back in his thin 3 day old t-shirt and sweatpants, Tony takes off in the direction of trouble.

There’s an Anti Avengers protest and ho-boy, is it a big one. There are Pro Avengers groups, and of course not-so-friendly-towards-Avengers groups showing up. From what Ghost had briefly filled him in on, some politicians were trying to rework the accords and get it through congress, to protect the now scattered heroes left. Endearing, certainly, but not something Tony would normally make an effort to show up to.

Here’s the problem: Harley’s there. You remember Harley, right? Because Tony sure as hell does. Faux sweet, innocent looking kid with the tongue of a viper and a mass of curly hair? He’s in trouble. Or he's about to be in trouble. These types of show downs usually end up bloody; the idea of that kid from  Tennessee being stuck in the middle... He doesn't dare dwell on it. Tony’s heart thumps with a sense of hope that he’s even alive – regrettably, he has no real plan of what to do with him once he gets there. He also has no idea why Harley is in New York; maybe he does, and he doesn’t enjoy the narrative his imagination implies.

Anyway, Harley and a big mob of angry people. Nothing good could possibly come from that combination. Tony inhales deeply, trying to get his breathing under control before rounding the corner. The street is thrumming with nervous energy, people pushing and shoving, news outlet vans parked in the middle of the road, people clambering on top of them.

“Jesus,” Tony says, pulling his sunglasses out of his pocket and scanning the crowd. No one seems to have noticed him yet, after all his beard has grown out and he’s in his plain black gym gear. “See him Ghost?”

A tower of a woman pushes past him, and as he wades into the thick of the mob he finds himself weaving and bobbing blows with various people.

“If Iron Man was here, he’d bust all your asses for threatening him and his super pals.”

Tony cusses. That sounds like Harley alright.

“Straight ahead of you, Guardian, standing on a car at the front.”

Besides crawling through the legs of the people in front, Tony makes it to the apex of the crowd, and now that he can see Harley taller and ganglier, _alive_ , Tony wants to yell at him and hug him at the same time. He ducks under the makeshift barricade and heads to the car, where Harley and some other youths are animatedly defending the Avengers.

Grabbing his sleeve, Tony yanks. Hard.

“What the hell, get off me!”

In the same moment, the politicians arrive and the people explode into violence. Bottles are being thrown, bodyguards doing their best to shield the clients from the fray. More desperately this time, Tony yanks causing Harley to slip down the bonnet of the car to his feet.

“Hey, hey kid,” He flicks his sunglasses down his nose, pulling Harley round by the shoulders to face him, “It’s me, the Mechanic, remember?”

All of the fight drains out of Harley, and his face contorts into an expression Tony can’t identify. He wasn’t expecting him to be ecstatic, but he was hoping for something along the lines of happy, as a minimum. Instead, Harley looks hurt. Betrayed, even.

“Let me go, I don’t need your help.”

Wasn’t this the same teenager preaching that Tony could take on this whole crowd only seconds ago?

“Mixed signals there buddy,” Tony says, eyes surveying the area. The mood has shifted from violence to passive aggressive slurs and mild defacement of public property, “We need to go.”

“Who says I’m going with you?”

Tony rolls his eyes – exactly what he needs to add to his list of problems, teenage rebellion in all it’s glory. He takes a proper look at Harley, from the hoody that sits too big on his shoulders, to his sunken eyes that keep glancing back to the group still protesting on top of the car. He decides to use the dirtiest tactic in the book of Bad Parenting 101 - indifference.

“Fine, Ghost show me the quickest route home.” He begins to escape the mass of people, thankful that, besides Harley, everyone seems to be more interested in the politics than in his bad disguise of himself.

“The boy is not moving.” Ghost declares.

“Give it time, G.” Tony ducks under some fallen banners that the demonstrators had hung all over the place.

Striding down the path, he smiles small to himself. He doesn’t need Ghost to inform him that the quiet steps behind him is in fact Harley, or that the harrumph that followed was down to his own lack of reaction. The silence goes from victorious to uncomfortable. In spite of feeling the need to say something to the kid, he finds himself at a loss. If Harley’s here, in New York, hanging out with a bunch of misfits, standing up for the Avengers, then where is him Mom? And his little sister… Tony forces the bile back into the depths of his stomach.

“Are we seriously walking all the way to Avengers Headquarters?” Harley’s pitching voice interrupts his thoughts. “And why didn’t you tell anyone you survived?” He kicks a rock and looks into the road, “I thought you would come looking for me. Instead I came to find you only to find everyone divided! Why haven’t you defended them? Where’s the rest of the Avengers?”

By this point Harley has stopped walking; his fists are tensed angrily at his sides, his cheeks brushed with a slight red where he’s trying to hold himself back.

“Easy,” Tony says, patting him awkwardly on the shoulder. He doesn’t remember this age well, spending too much time drunk or on the inside of a tool box, “I’ve made some mistakes, kid. Big ones. I’m trying to fix one of them right now.” He looks to the side of Harley’s head, imagining his own Dad having this conversation with him. Not that he ever did. “The second I got back on my feet I had Ghost looking for you.”

Harley shrugs him off, trudging on ahead.

“So it’s Ghost now, huh. Do you at least have a suit this time?”

Shaking his head Tony grins, _just like old times_ , “Nope.”

They take a taxi to cover the majority of the distance, Harley sulkily silent as Tony discusses with Ghost on his ear piece about what kind of energy source he needs to build. He didn’t think about grabbing his phone before leaving, so Harley uses the last of his cash to pay the cab before they finish the walk into the abandoned rocky plains.

He can tell Harley wants to comment on the fact there’s nothing but a sheer rock face in front of them; he rolls his eyes and lifts up his sunglasses to scan himself on the facial recognition software. The cliff splits and Harley makes a small gasp of surprise.

“So,” Tony leads the way, “Toilet’s over there, this is your room,” He points to the furnished room and king-sized bed he’s slept in exactly once, “If you need me I’ll be in the workshop through there. Kitchen’s down the hall, and is stocked so get yourself food whenever you want. Also feel free to leave, but for both our sake stay so I can keep an eye on you.”

It’s like owning a pet, Tony thinks. A pet with more complex needs and free will, but he lives with Dummy, how hard can it really be?

Harley explores the bedroom for a minute before following him into the workshop, looking slightly lost and in wonder all at the same time.

“Harley don’t touch that,” Ghost growls, startling him from where he was poking around in Tony’s equipment.

He looks terrified for a moment, and then bursts into laughter.

“What?” Tony asks, beginning to regret bringing the kid here in the first place. There wasn’t a better option though, no other secret headquarters or Avenger he can coerce into keeping him. Ultimately, they’ll have to have the conversation about Harley’s family and how he got to New York, too.

“Sorry, it’s just… Two video game references, from you? I mean that’s Kratos. What happened to the Mechanic I knew and when did he get so cool?”

“Oh, that,” Tony smiles; remembering the better days when the world wasn’t full of ash and hatred. “A friend wouldn’t stop going on about it, you’d have liked him.”

Harley withdraws at that, like a blow had hit him square in the chest.

“Plus, Ghost needed a little beefing up, Friday was too perky. He’s gruff as hell and can tell a mean bedtime story.” Aiming - and failing - to sound light hearted, Tony looks at the boy. Jeeze, Harley’s mom must be gone, his friends too… It has to be a really crappy situation to be ending up on Tony’s doorstep. “Hey come on, don’t make me ask him to sing ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ or something.”

The kid’s trance breaks (thank god, because Tony is so not good at this whole Dad thing), and he seems once again interested to investigate the panels and flick through some of the books littering the ground.

“Tony what the hell is going on?” Steve's voice suddenly booms back into his life.

He’d absolutely forgotten he had been talking to Steve earlier. Had he been waiting there the whole time?

Opening his mouth to speak, he sees Harley move a blur across his vision as the video feed cuts off. He sputters.

“Did you… Did you just cut off Captain America?”

Harley’s chest is heaving heavily, and they both stare at each other. Tony bursts into laughter, falling into his swivel chair with a guffaw.

“Only I’m allowed to do that, kid, what did you do that for?”

“I panicked, I thought you guys weren’t friends after the big fight thing.” Harley turns his back, looking at the screen with a very confused and disgruntled Steve on the other side. He picks up the old faceplate from the armour that saved him on Titan, fingers rolling over the coarse metal.

Tony groans.

“We’re not, not exactly. But the world’s kinda a mess right now huh, so why can’t Captain America and Iron Man be friends?”

_It’s not that crazy to imagine, is it?_

After contemplating the idea of him and Steve, Tony turns to his workbench, pulling a panel towards him. Loading up an extensive amount of code, he starts to put some adjustments into the bots. He also brings up the old schematics for his arc reactor. The power source needs to be sustainable and containable, and to create one that’s slightly smaller than the arc reactor seems like a good place to start. It’ll also act as a red herring, because people will assume that it’s his life source and not the core for his new suit.

“Woah!” He hears Harley exclaim and is instantly on edge.

“What are you looking at?”

Harley is sitting on the floor, cradling the mask to his face. Quickly marching over, he wrenches the plate away from him.

“Ghost what did you show him?”

He puts the offending mask on the table as though it were made of molten lava. His heart ticks a Morse code rhythm in his chest, an indecipherable compilation of dread and panic.

“The boy requested to see what happened, I was merely replaying the recovered footage.”

“You _what_!?” His fist slams on the crisp laminated surface, making a sickening crack. The strenuous movement stretches all of his healing wounds, making him bow forward. He shakes his head to himself, showing Harley _that_ was like taking a toddler to a rated 18+ movie. A real life movie with lots of blood and gore and world ending sadness.

“It’s fine, I can handle it.” Harley sounds so confident, even with his slightly cracking voice.

Tony peaks through his fingers to look at him. He looks so much older than that scruffy kid who let him hide out in his garage.

“Go build something, I want to see.”

Mechanic. Building. Panic attacks. Flashbacks.

Is his life just a cycle of his own misfortune?

“Build, I can do that.” He nods, to himself, “Ghost lock those files-“

“But-!”

He stabs a finger in Harley’s direction, turning to the metal brackets and computers behind him.

“And IF Mr Hotshot over there can get past you, he has my explicit permission to view any files he so wishes, with your parental discretion Ghost.”

“As you wish, Guardian. Come get some food boy.”

Harley sighs for what seems like the hundredth time already since he got here.

“Come _where_?” He asks, expectantly scowling at the back of the Mechanic.

“In the direction of food.”


End file.
